THE SIT DOWN
18: ANA BENAVIDES
At the time, she didn't see a local art degree as the right path for the kind of practice she wanted to pursue, and her parents weren't ready to let her go abroad, so instead she studied Advertising and Marketing Communications, reasoning that if she was going to be an artist she'd need to understand the business side too. She kept painting throughout. A graduation present from her parents — a week-long painting course at UAL in London — turned out to be decisive. Back home, she began researching leading painting MAs internationally, applied to two of the programmes she admired most, and was accepted to both. She chose the RCA.
The work then was pop art, and she's clear that the RCA was where the practice she has now began. She arrived feeling underqualified beside classmates with fine art degrees, and the first year was hard — competitive, and a real adjustment from the culture she'd grown up in. But she is persistent by nature, and the pressure she put on herself became the thing that formed her. She graduated in 2023 into what she describes as the real world, with no creative family to show her what being an artist actually involved.
Her paintings rest on three things: colour, gesture, and texture. Colour she attributes to Mexico, where it was so much a part of daily life that it sits in her subconscious rather than her decisions. Gesture came from somewhere more complicated. She grew up in a conservative Catholic environment where she encountered strong expectations around women and their roles, and the sweeping, bodily marks in her work — especially the early work — were a way of getting out from under those beliefs, a liberation that moving to London only amplified. Texture is what turns feeling into something you can almost touch: sand, marble powder in different grades, wax, and oil, layered until the surface has a physical presence that photographs never quite capture.
What the paintings are for is simpler to state. She sees a world that is overstimulated and chaotic, and wants her work to be a place to stop and go inward — to sit with the emotions we'd rather not look at as much as the ones we love. Hilma af Klint is her idol, and Kandinsky and Joan Mitchell are close behind, painters for whom colour was a spiritual or synaesthetic language rather than decoration. If someone stands in front of a painting and feels something, even if it isn't what she intended, she considers the work as having had its desired effect.
She describes her act of painting as a conversation with the canvas: one brushstroke, a response, another. It happens fast, and it depends on reaching a state where she stops analysing altogether. Her best work comes from there. She has historically resisted working in tightly defined series, believing each canvas carries its own energy and shouldn't be forced into a theme, though this year she has become more interested in threading certain colours across works so they speak to one another.
The three years since the RCA have followed the arc most artists eventually learn to expect. The first brought opportunities in quick succession — Tabula Rasa and Haricot Gallery in London, T293 in Rome, a solo show titled Why Are We So Afraid of Feeling? at L.U.P.O. in Milan, and exhibitions as far as Shanghai and Dubai. The second taught her about silence. The third has been about making sure her future doesn't rest entirely in other people's hands: she still teaches children, and has begun running workshops on her creative process and what happens when you become present enough to turn down the volume on your own thoughts. She talks about growth the way she talks about painting — slowly, step by step, building a base solid enough to hold whatever comes next. Comparison, she says, is a game you always lose.
PF: Who or what has influenced your work the most?
What has influenced my work the most is nature and colour. I grew up in Monterrey, the “City of Mountains,” so plants, flowers and the natural landscape were part of my surroundings from a very young age. I’ve always felt a strong, almost spiritual connection to nature, and I think that relationship continues to find its way into my work, particularly through colour, movement and organic forms.
In terms of artists, I remember studying Henri Matisse when I was younger and being completely drawn to his approach to colour, the way he used it not simply to represent what he saw, but to create an emotional experience. Then, when I was around 17, I saw Yayoi Kusama’s work in person, and that experience really opened my mind to the possibilities of what art could be and what you could create with an idea. It made me realise that art didn’t have to fit within the boundaries I had imagined for it.
In terms of artists, I remember studying Henri Matisse when I was younger and being completely drawn to his approach to colour, the way he used it not simply to represent what he saw, but to create an emotional experience. Then, when I was around 17, I saw Yayoi Kusama’s work in person, and that experience really opened my mind to the possibilities of what art could be and what you could create with an idea. It made me realise that art didn’t have to fit within the boundaries I had imagined for it.
PF: What do you want people to feel or take away from your art?
I want people to feel. I know that sounds simple, but I also feel that truly allowing ourselves to feel has become increasingly difficult in our current reality. We are constantly stimulated and surrounded by information, and I want my paintings to create a space where people can pause and reconnect with their own inner experience.
I think about this in relation to Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of perception: the idea that our first encounter with the world is embodied, experienced through the body before it is processed by the rational mind. I want the first response to my work to be intuitive and physical, a sensation, a feeling, an attraction or even a discomfort, before the viewer starts trying to understand or rationalise what they are seeing.
My aim is to be a vessel, and almost a mirror, through which people can recognise something of themselves. The emotion or feeling I have while making a painting doesn’t necessarily need to be the same one the viewer experiences. I want the work to leave enough space for them to find their own meaning and perhaps connect with an emotion or feeling within themselves that they weren’t consciously aware of before.
I want people to feel. I know that sounds simple, but I also feel that truly allowing ourselves to feel has become increasingly difficult in our current reality. We are constantly stimulated and surrounded by information, and I want my paintings to create a space where people can pause and reconnect with their own inner experience.
I think about this in relation to Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of perception: the idea that our first encounter with the world is embodied, experienced through the body before it is processed by the rational mind. I want the first response to my work to be intuitive and physical, a sensation, a feeling, an attraction or even a discomfort, before the viewer starts trying to understand or rationalise what they are seeing.
My aim is to be a vessel, and almost a mirror, through which people can recognise something of themselves. The emotion or feeling I have while making a painting doesn’t necessarily need to be the same one the viewer experiences. I want the work to leave enough space for them to find their own meaning and perhaps connect with an emotion or feeling within themselves that they weren’t consciously aware of before.
PF: Walk us through your creative process?
My creative practice begins with living my life. Although that might sound simple, I find myself fascinated by my inner world, understanding the thoughts, emotions and feelings that arise through everyday experiences, conversations, and reading. The more I experience and absorb from life, the more fuel I have to bring into the studio and begin painting.
A big part of that way of living is paying attention to colour. Colour is everywhere, so being present in my everyday life and noticing the forms, figures and colours around me becomes a constant source of inspiration. I often find myself collecting colour combinations mentally, sometimes there are three or four colours that I’ve encountered in my surroundings that I immediately feel could work beautifully together on a canvas.
Meditation is also an important part of my process. It helps me quiet my mind and move away from overthinking, allowing my body and intuition to take over through painting. Before I begin a larger work, I often sketch, which helps me explore composition and think through possible relationships between colour and form without becoming too attached to a particular outcome.
Then comes the painting itself. I immerse myself in the process, usually with headphones on and classical music playing, particularly Ludovico Einaudi, or handpan music. I begin painting, and it becomes a conversation between myself and the canvas. The sketches remain somewhere in the back of my mind, but I allow the intuitive process to lead the way. I respond to each mark with another, building layer upon layer and continually adding, removing and transforming colour as the painting develops.
For me, the process is ultimately about reaching a point where I stop trying to control the painting and allow it to reveal itself through the dialogue between intuition, movement, colour and material.
A big part of that way of living is paying attention to colour. Colour is everywhere, so being present in my everyday life and noticing the forms, figures and colours around me becomes a constant source of inspiration. I often find myself collecting colour combinations mentally, sometimes there are three or four colours that I’ve encountered in my surroundings that I immediately feel could work beautifully together on a canvas.
Meditation is also an important part of my process. It helps me quiet my mind and move away from overthinking, allowing my body and intuition to take over through painting. Before I begin a larger work, I often sketch, which helps me explore composition and think through possible relationships between colour and form without becoming too attached to a particular outcome.
Then comes the painting itself. I immerse myself in the process, usually with headphones on and classical music playing, particularly Ludovico Einaudi, or handpan music. I begin painting, and it becomes a conversation between myself and the canvas. The sketches remain somewhere in the back of my mind, but I allow the intuitive process to lead the way. I respond to each mark with another, building layer upon layer and continually adding, removing and transforming colour as the painting develops.
For me, the process is ultimately about reaching a point where I stop trying to control the painting and allow it to reveal itself through the dialogue between intuition, movement, colour and material.
PF: If you could have dinner with any artist who would it be?
I would love to have dinner with Yayoi Kusama, Kandinsky, Hilma af Klint, Lee Krasner and Joan Mitchell. But then I’d also love to meet John Singer Sargent and Alphonse Mucha.
What fascinates me is that they all have such different ways of seeing and interpreting the world, and such distinct approaches to their practices. I’d be incredibly curious to hear how they experienced their own creative processes, what they were trying to understand through their work, and what they saw in the world that perhaps others didn’t.
What fascinates me is that they all have such different ways of seeing and interpreting the world, and such distinct approaches to their practices. I’d be incredibly curious to hear how they experienced their own creative processes, what they were trying to understand through their work, and what they saw in the world that perhaps others didn’t.
SELECT WORKS
Oil, marble powder, oil pastels and wax on canvas
109 cm x 101 cm
Oil, marble powder, oil pastels and wax on canvas
140 cm x 140 cm
Oil, marble powder, oil pastels and wax on canvas
90 cm x 160 cm
Oil, marble powder, oil pastels and wax on canvas
90 cm x 70 cm