BIOGRAPHY
Benice Horowitz was born and raised in Johannesburg, South Africa. She has been drawing and painting since childhood and studied art at the Bill Ainsley School of Art in Johannesburg, at the Silvermine Art School in New Canaan, and in private workshops in South Africa and around the U.S. Her inspiration derives from the color she perceives in the landscape, tribal life and her passion for the beauty of the human form.
Horowitz migrated to the United States in 1979 and attended classes at Silvermine throughout the 1980’s. Her most influential and inspiring teacher was Jakki Kouffman, with whom she studied for ten years. Their relationship as colleagues and friends continues to this day.
Kouffman introduced Benice to painting with acrylic on paper and this was a turning point for the Stamford artist. This media combination facilitated the use of the gestural line and energetic brushwork, and allowed for alla prima painting with this quick drying, polymer-based medium.
Horowitz has juried into shows and won many awards since 1985. To date she has received 75 prizes for painting in the Northeast and New York. The most notable are the Medal of Honor and Dorothy Tabak Memorial Award, and the D. WU & Elsie Ject-Key Memorial Awards from the National Association of Women Artists in 2003; the Fred Kraus Memorial Award for Abstract Painting at the Faber Birren National Exhibition in 1994; and the Pierce Archer Prize (Best in Show Award) at the Spectrum Show at the New Canaan Art Society in 1991.
Other awards include the Theresa Langhorne Duble Award for Non-Representational Painting in 1994; the UST Award at the Annual Members Juried Exhibition at the Greenwich Art Association in 1991; and the Diane Alexander Award for Acrylic Painting at the Art of the Northeast Exhibition at the Silvermine Art Center in 2011. In addition she was selected to participate in four-person exhibitions at the Stamford Museum’s Connecticut Art Annual in 1994 and at the Westport Arts Center’s States of Connecticut Show in 2007. She was chosen as one of four painters to represent the last decade at the Bruce Museum, Greenwich Ct. in 2011.
Horowitz has served in several statewide and regional art organizations, including President of the New York Society of Women Artists and as Vice President of the Stamford Art Association. She also holds the distinction of artist member of Silvermine Artists Guild. In 2007, she was presented with a certificate of appreciation for outstanding contributions to the City of Stamford by Daniel Malloy, then Mayor of Stamford.
For Horowitz, painting is primarily about the process itself. She is passionate about the application of the paint and moves with intuitive ease through an exuberant palette of rich color. With her long experience of painting out of doors, she projects an authentic response to shifts in temperament. In this way, Horowitz spins compelling realities from the imagination, and convinces the viewer to believe them, too.
ARTIST STATEMENT
When I paint, I try to get in touch with my inner emotions with the use of color and color values. The painting is resolved when it reflects my feelings successfully. I use the scene before me or one from memory as a vehicle for inspiration . The high key color values reflect the exuberance and joy and the deeper earthy tones portray more somber emotions.
A sense of fulfillment is achieved from the process itself. The challenge is to use the gestural brushstrokes, the calligraphic marks and the color to achieve a coherent statement in keeping with the mood of the moment.
The Art of Benice Horowitz; An Appreciation.
JAKKI KOUFFMAN
The paintings of Benice Horowitz convert temperament to colour by means of gesture. The effort to partner colour with mark making parallels the process of co-joining feeling to action. For Horowitz, the ability to maneuver expressively in this way betrays an unerring instinct to create a visible witness to private shifts of temperament. As a result, these nearly abstract paintings always seem to be about something, however embroiled they are in acts of pure painterliness.
At times, this gesture appears to reflect the natural coursing of thought. The format becomes more episodic. The grammar of successive grid spaces gives way to the logic of unfolding self-awareness.
References to landscape dominate Horowitz’s prolific production. Rather than projecting a single sense of place, however, her landscape reveals a journey between one internal locale and another. Using graffiti-like script, the all-over frenzy of painterly remarks belies a consistent array of hard-won truths.
In Horowitz’s work we find clues to the artist’s larger intention: to witness, by the act of painting, evidence of a greater human dilemma. The result is that each painting contains a world; not of certainty, but of ceaseless questioning. Each painting proves its worth by suggesting its own successor, asserting in this way the essential regenerative nature of painting itself.
* Jakki Kouffman taught painting at the Silvermine Guild School of Arts in New Canaan, Connecticut for eleven years, during which time Benice Horowitz attended many of her classes and workshops. Kouffman is presently living and painting in Cape Cod, Massachusetts.