Artist’s book celebrates ‘Night Skies’

Last updated 4/2/2019 at Noon

Paul Alan Bennett

Sisters artist Paul Alan Bennett’s latest venture makes it very easy to have his world-renowned art in your home — and in your hands.

He has combined a lifelong fascination with the night sky — which he has depicted often in his art — and his love for Greek mythology in a new book titled “Night Skies.” The book features 44 paintings with text that feature the night sky.

Bennett has had a long relationship with the night sky.

“I remember being about 10 and looking at the night sky and feeling like something wonderful was about to happen,” he said. “I felt it in every cell of my body.”

Then, with his trademark sly grin, he said, “I think the next day I went through puberty!”

Bennett has been painting the night sky for years, some of the paintings inspired by long drives across Central Oregon, with the headlights probing the vault of the heavens.

“It’s part of our landscape, just like the mountains, the rivers, the trails,” he said.

Greek myth, which Bennett became enamored with during his art studies in Greece as a young man, also play into the narrative of Night Skies.

The Greeks threw their mythology into the skies and named the constellations that we know today.

“It’s all quite wondrous, I think,” Bennett said.

Bennett plans to tour Oregon bookstores in support of Night Skies, — and playing related original songs on his ukulele, yet another of his artistic passions.

“Music is such a wonderful way to create that whole other world where anything is possible,” he said.

Like music, the night sky can be enjoyed and appreciated without an intricate knowledge of how it is composed. And Bennett urges his fellow Sisters residents to take full advantage of the sky above us.

“We live in a planetarium here,” he said.

The artist believes that basking in the night sky is “an important kind of soul food,” and a way “to get people out of their heads. It’s also healthy to just look up.”

The artist has taken to asking others about their encounters with the night sky — and those stories may well make up the basis for Night Skies, Volume II.

Bennett has worked in a variety of media, from paintings to tapestries to wearable art. The venture into publishing was a new trail.

More than just another vehicle by which to put his art in front of an audience, Night Skies is a love letter to the natural world and an encouragement to discovery. It closes with a call to action:

“We are all part of this illumination. Use your deeper senses. Join with others.

Look up!”

Night Skies is available locally at Bedouin and at Paulina Springs Books.

For more information on Paul Alan Bennett and his art, visit https://paulalanbennett.com.

Author Bio

Jim Cornelius, Editor in Chief

Jim Cornelius is editor in chief of The Nugget and author of “Warriors of the Wildlands: True Tales of the Frontier Partisans.” A history buff, he explores frontier history across three centuries and several continents on his podcast, The Frontier Partisans. For more information visit www.frontierpartisans.com.