The Geoffrey Biography

Geoffrey Mark Benzing was born in 1975 and is a professional artist who lives in Lawrence Kansas. He has studied art at Hutchison Community Collage and Wichita State University and has shown art since 2001 in Lawrence, Wichita, and Kansas City. Geoff also paints houses, and is a boxing coach at Haskell Indian Collage. Geoff loves animals and he owns two parrots who keep him company while he paints. Geoff's goal as an artist is to paint as many paintings as he can and sell them at a reasonable price. Geoff loves to paint, and he loves the connection he has to people in his community and across the country through his art work.

Artist Statements: Techniques

I have quite a motley assortment of pieces on my website, and I think that shows how my brain works and who I am. Sometimes it does not gel, but other times the randomness equals out and there is balance.  When I started selling art I was selling the prints of originals that I painted for my mother and grandma, so that is why most of my stuff is still so colorful, peaceful and positive, perfect for grandmas.  When I began painting again seriously, I was 25 and working on a golf course where I mowed fairways and greens, and I used the same method of covering space with paint as I did in mowing... one stripe one way, one back the other way.

This technique developed into a new style with the brick stacking square brush strokes I use with acrylic paint.

So these trademark styles I developed from mowing grass. I enjoy trying to come up with new styles and techniques, and another style that I have come up with is the water color collage. I cut out pieces of painted paper and glue them onto the painting creating a 3-D effect, and sharp, defined edges.

Elephants People are always asking me "what's up with the elephants, and I don't always know how to answer. Something about elephants has always amazed me, it might be their size and weird features, but it is also that they are so human in spirit. The next question is "what's up with the wheels?", and I have never really explained it, I have always left it up the the viewer.  It was just another creative impulse that I figured clever at the time, but now that I have done so many, I feel I must explain them.  To me, rolling elephants symbolize human beings, we roll so much, we might as well have wheels for feet.  Elephants are emotional and big and on the go, just like us.  I also call them elephants of the future or rollerphants, and that is a reference to evolution, and a positive view of a world that will last long enough for elephants to evolve wheels.  But I have also been told that an elephant with it's trunk down is bad luck, and maybe bad luck and wheels go together....  Like I said, I originally let folks come up with their own ideas.

Town Lights Power lines inspired this group of paintings. As I was riding my bike one night, it dawned on me how many cords and cables filled the canopy of our little town.  They slice through the street light, and moon light, and hatch patterns across the sky.  I wanted to capture this feature of the modern world in watercolor.  So I started with street lights and porch lights, and added all the neighborhood images of trees, animals, people, mailboxes, houses, and most of all power lines.   I am still doing these, and whenever I am passing through my favorite neighborhoods, I am on the lookout for small town yard things to incorporate, like lawnmowers, grills, toys, ect...

Whales Whales are kind of like elephants, very human like.  I was looking through an animal book that showed all the different kinds of whales and I thought it would be fun to paint a series of whales. There are so many different kinds, I figured I could make quite and extensive series.  I also wanted to paint the separation of the sky and water, and have birds in the sky and fish in the water, and show a separation of the worlds.