About John Bennett BA Med OSA RCA CSPWC (Written In 2012)
Honorary Member: American Watercolour Society, Japanese Watercolour Society
John Bennett began to draw and to paint when he was six. He is ninety three now and still draws, paints, sculpts and creates objects in fused glass in the Sunnybrook Veteran’s art studios He has always said, “I can’t not paint”. While he served as an infantry camouflage officer during WWII, he captured the terrain of Normandy, Belgium, Holland and Great Britain on small sheets of watercolour paper. This year, seventy-eight of these and two of his books were accepted into the Archives of the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa. When he returned to Toronto, he joined the art department of Northern Vocational School. Over four decades he taught thousands of young people. He retired from the Toronto Board of Education in 1982 as Co-ordinator of Visual Arts. His workshop teaching and his painting took him throughout Ontario, across Canada and around the world. So, he became an educator to support his wife and two daughters. But his passionate core was clearly his painting. He called it his ‘Joy” ! Shortly after John returned from overseas, he was granted the first solo exhibition awarded to a living artist by the ( then) Art Gallery of Toronto – later AGO. The reviews were encouraging. A number of Toronto galleries subsequently hosted exhibitions by John Bennett. One memorable show,’ The Ladies’ at the Pollack Gallery in Yorkville.in the 60’s drew excited – and shocked- crowds. Not only are John’s women larger and lusher than life – his goddesses – but so are his landscapes, seascapes and cityscapes. His work ranges from rolling pastoral hills to the devastation of battlefields.
He has tackled life and death with equal vigor. Hundreds of his paintings can be found in private and public collections.