Michele-Benzamin-Miki Performance Art Piece
Most of my work is representational, using elements of realism, symbolism, and surrealism.
The images have political and spiritual themes woven through them. It is my intention that these images inspire the observer to see themselves and others as part of an interconnected web of life and consciousness.
My most recent exhibition was entitled “Backbone,” a series of images of women in graphite and some colored pencil on paper. Using negative space – dark or light – and plays of shadows around and on the figures, I give the viewer the sense of being suspended in a moment of time with the figure in the image.
Many of the figures are viewed from behind. They hold onto a rope, suspended over vast space. These images were initially inspired by a dream in which I was a tiny spider hanging from a single silken thread. I was floating in the midst of dark, vast space. I was at home in my nature, and free from fear. I simply replaced the spider with a human, and the spider’s silken thread with the rope.
My work is often inspired by stories, and depicts the private, internal world of the subject drawn.
I use different media; I paint in Oils, Watercolors and Sumie Inks. I draw in pencil, and colored pencil, and currently I am working with pastels, drawing and painting using both soft and hard pastels.
My background in Meditation and Martial Arts greatly influences my art as well as my own multicultural
MichelePerformance Piece
background. I am Hapa (first generation Japanese) mixed with European and North African heritage.
I was born in Corona del Mar in 1955 and grew up in California and Japan. I have traveled extensively through Asia and Europe. My interest in art began at an early age through the encouragement and instruction of my father, an artist and poet. I attended college, majoring in Art, while working full-time as head designer and co-partner in an airbrush studio in Woodland Hills, California. After college,
I worked as a commercial and graphic artist. In 1980, I shifted my focus to oil painting, drawing, gallery exhibitions and commissioned works.
I am also a Performance Artist and have combined visual art with performance art.
I am co-founder of Manzanita Village Retreat Center where I teach Zen meditation and the martial arts of Aikido and Iaido (Japanese sword). I am also a Master Hypnotherapist, NeuroLinguistic Programming Practitioner and Trainer, and Performance Coach.
I currently live in the Valle de San Jose, near Warner Springs, in the chaparral forests and mountains of Northeastern San Diego County, where my Art Studio is located.
