The renowned American portrait painter Stephen Bennett’s Faces of Light Art Exhibition has just launched with an opening ceremony on 19 June at The Venetian Macao. It marks the first Stephen Bennett exhibition in China, showcasing the human diversity of the world with 38 small and large scale hand-painted portraits of people from different cultures from around the world, including China and Japan, on display. I have been to the exhibition and after carefully examining each painting it feels as if I have reached into the 38 characters’ inner worlds.
Bennett’s portrait of Hollywood actress Sharon Stone
Highlights include portraits of Namibia’s beloved actor N!xau from the film “The Gods Must Be Crazy”, Hollywood actress Sharon Stone and renowned Aboriginal didgeridoo maker Djalu Gurruwiwi.
Over the last two decades Bennett has travelled to over 30 countries, seeking out indigenous people to capture their soulful faces and ritual adornments through colorful paintings on a grand scale. Bennett’s mission is to preserve and celebrate the world’s diversity through a unique style of realism using interpretive colors with paints that he has hand-mixed from pure pigments. The focus of his paintings is the eyes, which invite people to enter and experience their common humanity.
Bennett’s portrait entitled "The Gods Must Be Crazy" portrays Namibia’s beloved actor N!xau from the film of the same name.
Bennett’s work has been exhibited in private and national galleries in Tanzania, Brunei, Sarawak, Malaysia, Mexico, St Martin, Panama, France, French Polynesia, the Seychelles and the United States. His work has been featured on three sets of United Nations postage stamps in 2009, 2010 and 2012, and issued in three countries and three languages at the United Nations Headquarters offices in Austria, Switzerland and the USA.
The exhibition runs from 11:00 to 20:00 daily until 3 August on Level 3 of The Venetian Macao, near the Venetian Ballroom. Admission is free.
