Allen Bentley
Biography
Allen Bentley’s exploration of motion runs throughout his career. He uses quick, energetic touches to reflect the dynamic nature of our quest for connection. Primarily a figurative artist, Bentley turns to dance as both metaphor and method—using the moving body as a way to explore themes of tension, intimacy, and rhythm. Pushing, pulling, flirting, chasing: these are the moments he captures in a flurry of gestural marks.
He received his Master of Fine Arts from the University of Pennsylvania in 2000 and his Bachelor of Fine Arts from Western Carolina University in 1996. His work has been exhibited across the country, with solo shows in Philadelphia, New York, Chicago, and San Diego. Bentley is represented by the Bridgette Mayer Gallery in Philadelphia, PA and Jo Fleming Contemporary Art in Annapolis, MD. His work has appeared at the Philadelphia International Airport and in Artworks at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. In 2009, he had his first solo museum exhibition at the Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts in Wilmington, DE.
Bentley recently completed a commission for Lamborghini celebrating the 60th anniversary of the company. The painting is on view at The Automobili Lamborghini Museum in Bologna, Italy.
He teaches Figure Drawing, Painting, and Drawing at Montgomery College in Rockville, MD, and serves as chair of the Christopher Lyon Scholarship selection committee at the University of Pennsylvania.
Bentley lives in Clarksburg, MD with his wife and children.
Artist Statement
I’ve always been a figurative painter. I use bodies in motion to tell my stories, exploring the relationship of a couple or the celerity of cars as they push, pull, flirt, and chase. Capturing a moment amidst motion is what I strive for in every piece I create. This is exactly why I began with dancers. There’s an inherent story in couple’s dance of moving to and fro, in and out, that lends itself to the electricity of their relationship and it thrilled and inspired me to immortalize that feeling in oils and charcoal.
While doing a body of work on couples underwater, I found myself becoming as interested in the dynamics of the environment that moved around my subjects as I was with the figures themselves. In between painting work focused on the figure, I began exploring the water, not as background, but as subject. Then, once more I was falling deeper into the passion and impatience of capturing motion, this time with ripples, bubbles, and currents.
Now, after two decades of polishing and painting my dance works, I’ve jumped onto a whole new track of excitement— the freedom of driving. Not focused on how it looks but how it feels. Power, anticipation, exhilaration: to slip through on the edge of control. It’s finding that line between forward and stillness. Just like in the paintings, speed blurs the world as your focus is sharpened, spirit is calmed as you burn through space. This work is about freedom to be in a moment and exists as yet another deep exploration of motion in my life.
The pursuit of real interaction drives so much of our relationships. Whether in speed, underwater, or in dance, my work explores intimacy and connection through motion. Energy and passion, rhythm and play guide my figures through moments of reaching, spinning, holding. We chase one another in the hopes of finding a similar resonance, an affinity with another.
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