GABRIELLE BENOT
I paint horses, and owners commission me to paint theirs. My commissions include the two-time Grade 1 winner Raging Torrent, trained by Doug O'Neill, along with Ah Jeez, So There She Was, Oceanic and Don't Bring Crazy, and a portrait of Secretariat.
I have participated in events and projects with the Breeders' Cup, Thoroughbred Charities of America, the Permanently Disabled Jockeys Fund and the Real Rider Cup. At the Thoroughbred Charities of America benefit during Breeders' Cup week at Del Mar in 2021, a commission of mine was auctioned for the charity. I also designed the racing silks for Surfside Stable.
Alongside the horses, my Speed collection includes two paintings made with racing drivers: Big Rubber with Patrick Long, and Breaking Barriers with Timo Bernhard.
Originally from Latvia, I trained in fashion design at Margrethe Skolen in Copenhagen, and I have been painting for about fifteen years. I work in acrylic and heavy texture on canvas, metal, wood and plexiglass, at sizes up to six by seven feet, using a layered technique of my own that I call Guscio, from the Italian word for shell. I live and work in Del Mar, California.
"THE CONVENTIONAL DEFINITION OF REALITY AND THE IDEA OF NORMAL LIFE MEAN NOTHING."
- SIGMAR POLKE
As a multimedia artist, I love working with a variety of styles and keep up the tradition of experimental art techniques of the great masters such as Roy Lichtenstein, Sigmar Polke, and James Rosenquist. Whether it is an aesthetically pleasing high art, thought-provoking conceptual minimalism, or just a visually ambivalent mixture of things, I try to create a collision of high and low culture.
At the heart of my practice lies the 'Guscio' technique - a signature multimedia methodology I developed that breathes tactile life into the canvas. By freely mixing wet and dry brushes, palette knives, oil pastels, and textured pastes, I build profound sculptural layers that demand to be felt as much as they are seen.
[ THE GUSCIO TECHNIQUE ]
Every piece is an active investigation of physical topography. By fusing rich pigment loads, raw mineral texture paste, heavy-body acrylic reliefs, and dynamic palette knife fissures, we translate organic velocity directly onto canvas, metal, and hand-woven silk.