_PNG.png){kind=small}
Mary Ellen Bennett
USA
_p.png)
"I do not draw anything; I simply envision it instead."
Mary Ellen Bennett is a self-taught artist who has been creating for roughly twenty years, building a body of work that turns overlooked materials into vivid, tactile paintings. She makes three-dimensional mixed-media pieces from found objects, layering texture and color until each surface becomes something you want to reach out and touch. Her work sits comfortably outside conventional categories, and that is exactly where she likes it to be, because for her the point was never to imitate what already exists but to see what could be coaxed out of the odds and ends most people overlook, discard, or throw away without a second thought.
Shaping shapes | Mixed Media
$150
14 x 12
An oval canvas with a square wood scroll saw pattern can create all kinds of shapes, Sea shells turned upside down help to make painted circles add the texture. Both are created using sand, stones, sawdust, and found materials. Touching and feeling it is like shaping nature.
Her materials are wonderfully unexpected, gathered from everyday life rather than an art supply store. She works with sand, sawdust, scrap wood from her husband's scroll saw art, pieces of nature, and paint, combining them into a bonding mixture that holds each found object firmly to the canvas. Over the years she has folded in the most surprising things imaginable, from jewelry rings and scrap jewelry to unused dental floss and nearly anything else that catches her eye. Nothing is too humble or too odd to belong, and part of the delight of her work lies in discovering just what an ordinary cast-off object has quietly become.
Colors On A Canvas | Mixed Media
$150
12 x 14
Two styles of creating are used in this painting and that gives it originality. The top layer was a scrap pattern for a scroll saw piece that adhered to a canvas panel. The inside of it has small wood pieces, sand .broken shells and paint in it. this gives it lots of texture and color. Each corner has a wood shape with the same combination covering it. The background canvas is painted with the tip of a glue gun tapped against a crayon. The tip of the glue gun thus becomes a paint brush.
"My only rule for making art is to have fun."
There is a genuine philosophy running beneath her love of unlikely materials. Mary Ellen is drawn to the act of rescue, to taking something that another person would happily destroy or discard and lifting it into a piece of art with a life of its own. That transformation is the beating heart of her practice, a small, repeated act of seeing value where others see only rubbish. In her hands a forgotten scrap is not merely reused but genuinely reborn, given color, texture, and a permanent place within a composition that would feel incomplete without it.
Hidden Images | Mixed Media
$250
20 x 10
This painting has lots of texture and character to it. Each shape becomes part of a puzzle that is being developed. It has several layers of sand , broken shells, sawdust, paint, and other found materials in it. It is a 3d on gallery canvas that is full of plenty interesting characters.
Community sits close to the center of everything she does as an artist. She is active in an art group in Salisbury, North Carolina, where she does far more than simply make her own work, choosing instead to share what she has learned with anyone eager to try. She teaches others how to relax and let their minds flow freely as they create, gently loosening the grip of self-doubt that so often stops people before they begin. For Mary Ellen, making art has never been a solitary or guarded pursuit, but something warm and generous that grows richer the moment it is shared with others.
This gleaming piece of art is making cut up straws, stones, sand and paint look like a sparkling piece of art. the texture accents the color and the ingredients give it extra texture. Sparkling beads and small pieces of sea glass accent the painting.
Hidden Straws | Mixed Media
$200
12 x 24
"Texture is everything to me, so I build each painting outward from the canvas with sand, sawdust, and paint until it begs to be touched."
"I never worry that my art looks different from everyone else's, because being different has never once frightened me; I would far rather follow my own vision honestly, rescuing the small forgotten things that other people would happily destroy, and let each painting slowly become exactly what I already see waiting inside it, than make something safe and tidy that looks like all the rest."
Loopy Loops | Mixed Media
$200
12 x 12
Circles are in most items fro various places around you. These circles were able to help me create a textured colorful painting. It is created using sand, stones. broken shells and paint. What you see in it may not be what I see in it but that is okay,
Her belief in art's healing power comes from lived and personal experience rather than theory. Creating has helped her weather the many ups and downs that life inevitably brings, offering a steady refuge and a place to put feeling when words fall short. She speaks about this openly, hoping others might discover the same quiet strength she has found in the simple act of making something with her hands. Art, for her, is not decoration or diversion but a genuine source of resilience, a way of steadying herself through difficulty and finding her footing again when the ground beneath her feels uncertain.
Shapes On Board | Mixed Media
$150
11 x 14
Scrap wood patterns used for scroll saw art can be used by connecting them together to develop shapes in a painting.Stones,beads,sawdust and paint hav helped me create a colorful abstract textured painting in a deep frame.
When she teaches, she carries only a single rule into the room with her, and she states it plainly to everyone who joins her. The one thing she asks is that people have fun, setting aside the fear of doing it wrong that keeps so many would-be artists from ever starting. She volunteers to teach students of all ages, guiding them toward the particular satisfaction of taking something destined for the trash and turning it into a piece of art. Watching that realization dawn on a new maker, that they too can create, is one of the great pleasures of her teaching life.
Using scrap wood can often make a painting look like a puzzle.Each shape is placed on sand and paint and left to dry. Then I add all of the found materials and paint the puzzle pieces. Thus each piece becomes an individual textured item. Then like a cake the coating on the bottom of sand and paint gives it the flare.
Jigsaw Painting | Mixed Media
$150
9 x 12
Her creative confidence is quietly remarkable, rooted in a refusal to be intimidated by convention. She knows perfectly well that her art is a different kind of art, unusual in its materials and its methods, yet she is never fearful of being creative in her own particular way. That fearlessness is not loud or showy but calm and settled, the assurance of someone who has made peace with following her own path. Rather than measuring her work against anyone else's, she simply keeps making what feels true to her, trusting her instincts and letting her individuality show plainly in everything she produces.
"Watching a stranger laugh at my work completes the piece."
There is a lovely distinction she likes to make whenever the subject of drawing comes up in conversation. If asked to draw something, she replies simply that she does not draw, she envisions, and the difference matters a great deal to her. Each painting begins as an inner seeing, an image she perceives within the materials before her hands ever begin to arrange them. What ends up on the canvas is a record of that vision, so that every finished piece is, quite literally, what she saw waiting inside it long before anyone else could recognize the shape it would eventually take.
Reused Material | Mixed Media
$200
12 x 12
Why throw away scraps pf material when you can turn them into a painting.a box of scraps, some sand and paint created a hard textured painting on a gallery canvas.. The colors and texture made it look like a hardened colorful art piece.
Her practice has carried her out into the wider world in ways she treasures. She has participated in art shows and art events, been published in a French art magazine, and continues to stay active in artful happenings of every kind. These milestones matter to her, yet they never seem to be the true point of the work, which remains rooted in the simple joy of making and sharing. Recognition is welcome when it comes, but it sits lightly alongside the deeper satisfactions of creation, community, and the ongoing pleasure of turning the discarded into something genuinely worth celebrating.
A three d painting on a canvas can become a colorful painting with wood pieces that are arranged together. Sand , paint and found materials are able to give it a textured surface that proves that wood can become pretty.
Bold And Blue | Mixed Media
$150
8 x 10
Above all, what sustains Mary Ellen is the response her art draws from the people who encounter it. Seeing others enjoy her work is, to her, one of the most pleasurable things in all of life, and to watch someone smile or laugh in front of a piece feels like a gift she is endlessly grateful to receive. That exchange, the moment where her vision meets another person's delight, completes the work in a way no gallery wall ever could. It is the reason she keeps gathering, bonding, and building, one rescued fragment at a time, with joy as her only rule.
Strings Of Color | Mixed Media
$450
24 x 36
I decide to create a colorful painting that extended out of the painting. I had no use for some thin strings so I combined them with sand and paint. I moved each color of paint together throughout the paint. By moving the paint by hand it gives it a flowing look.Thus you have alight colorful textured painting
"Nothing is ever too broken or humble to become art."
Not a solo artist yet? Subscribe to our solo exhibitions at TERAVARNA and share your art with the world!
