Johnye Bennett

Painter | Richmond, Virginia

Artist Bio

Johnye Bennett is a Richmond, Virginia-based painter working in acrylic, oil, and mixed media. An expressionist at heart, she moves between abstraction and the natural world — often within the same canvas — guided by color, feeling, and the environments she encounters both close to home and far from it. An extensive traveler, Bennett draws inspiration from landscapes, cultures, and light conditions across the globe, weaving those encounters together with her deep affinity for the botanical world.

Bennett came to painting after a distinguished career with the Virginia Senate. Retirement, for her, was not a retreat but an opening — a chance to give full expression to the creativity that had always been part of her nature. What began as exploration quickly became devotion. She now paints daily in a private studio behind her home, producing large-scale works — most running 36×48 or 48×60 inches — that command space and reward sustained looking.

Committed to deepening her craft, Bennett has sought out master instructors through workshops across the country, bringing a disciplined curiosity to a practice that is nonetheless rooted in intuition and joy. Her work is held in notable collections throughout Virginia, including the Virginia General Assembly Building — acquired by the Virginia Senate — as well as Westminster Canterbury, VCU Medical Center, and Cedarfield Retirement Community, in addition to numerous private residences.

A juried member of Oil Painters of America, her work is held in notable collections throughout Virginia, including the Virginia General Assembly Building — acquired by the Virginia Senate — as well as Westminster Canterbury, VCU Medical Center, and Cedarfield Retirement Community, in addition to numerous private residences. She shares her life with fellow artist Jim Smither, and takes quiet delight in the fact that her daughter-in-law also paints — and that her four-year-old granddaughter has already claimed her own easel.

Artist Statement

I paint because I have to. It is that simple, and that complete.

My work begins with color — not as decoration, but as feeling made visible. I am drawn to the expressive possibilities that sit at the edge of abstraction and the natural world: the pulse of a garden in full bloom, the weight of a petal, the particular quality of afternoon light in a country I am visiting for the first time. Botany gives me one kind of structure; travel gives me another — a constant disruption of the familiar that keeps my eye honest and my palette alive.

I work large — on canvases that ask the viewer to step into something rather than simply observe it. Scale is intentional. I want the work to surround you, to make you feel the heat or the stillness or the abundance I felt when the painting began — whether that moment happened in my studio garden or on the other side of the world. Acrylic, oil, and mixed media each offer different textures of truth, and I move between them based on what the work needs, not what is convenient.

I spent many years in service to Virginia's public life. That work taught me discipline and attentiveness — qualities I now bring into the studio every morning. Painting feeds my soul in a way that nothing else does. It is where I am most fully myself: present, alive to the world, and grateful for the extraordinary fact of color.