Raina Benoit

Creatively living and loving

Mixed Media

Artist Statement

I am interested in the tiny threads that make up a good story, when the division made between fact and fiction is no longer the issue.  This recent body of work is directly influenced by the place, the context, and the community in which it is displayed.  Ideas of the feminine, cohabitation, and the world as one giant organism are subtext to the work.  Living in various southern coastal towns, the tourism that keeps them alive, and the nature that is carved; bulldozed, and sculpted to make these towns possible was the impetus to the last seven years of research.  This body of work is an exploration of the nature that surrounds man’s developments and the battle between these two worlds. Largely influenced by animism, mysticism, anthropomorphism, news headlines, and trash, this body of work collages narratives found from within the environment and the remnants left behind by humans, at the border between the familiar and the estranged.  As an artist I am hunting to capture a truth whether it is metaphorical, momentary, or universal.