Leo Adam Biga's My Inside Stories

Expressionistic images by Elisa Morera Benn

©by Leo Adam Biga

Originally published in El Perico (el-perico.com)

Costa Rica native Elisa Morera Benn of Omaha has been making art infused with the colors and passions of her tropical Central American homeland since childhood.

“All my life my surroundings have been full of contrasts. Shades of green, red, orange, a whole range of intensities and feelings. It is impossible to separate artists from their visual and emotional environment,” she said.

She’s one of four siblings born to a customs agent father and stay-at-home mother.

“My father worked hard to give his children a private education. He later managed to open his own business.”

Benn studied with masters. Each gave her something that grew her as an artist.

“With Francisco Alvarado Avella, I learned the eroticism that always covered his paintings. With Soraya Goicoechea the realism of the portrait. With Max Rojas, the use of expressionism. With Isabel Naranjo, realism. With Rodolfo Rocha, I learned how to mix all these techniques.”

Her work’s shown internationally at the Louvre Museum in Paris, France and at galleries and museums in Fabriano, Italy, Juarez, Mexico, Toronto, Canada and Houston, Texas.

Since moving to America with her husband, Dr. Douglas Benn, an adjunct professor at the Creighton University School of Dentistry, she’s consistently shown her work in Nebraska. She recent exhibited at the Artists Cooperative Gallery in the Old Market. She has work at the Burkholder Project in Lincoln. She’ll show some pieces at her studio during the Hot Shops open house in December.

She and her husband reside in a near downtown home accented by her own art and by artwork they’ve collected. The couple met five years ago in Costa Rica when he visited there. They married three years ago.

Benn was no stranger to America, where she traveled on school vacations and visited an aunt in Florida.

“Once I moved here, I fell in love with Omaha, which is full of art.”

As a girl in Costa Rica a school teacher and a newly arrived classmate from Cuba affirmed her talent.

“All my life I have painted and drawn,” said Benn, who found her voice in art.

“My formal studies were in architecture but I didn’t finish. But always the drawing was in my blood,”

Like any artist, she finds inspiration in many sources. The paintings of Austrian symbolist painter Gustav Klimt and his use of gold leaf foil are particularly influential.

“Klimt’s symbolism seems extraordinary to me – the way he uses symbolism and geometric patterns, which I always use in my work.”

Expressionism best describes her style, though she incorporates elements of surrealism as well.

“We live in anxiety about humanity’s increasingly discordant relationship with the world and accompanying lost feelings of authenticity and spirituality. I am an expressionist and as such support the rebellion to be free from academic restrictions. I want to be free in the way I express myself.”

The style fits her temperament and vision.

“These techniques were meant to convey the emotional state of my feelings and my art reacting to the anxieties of the modern world with all the problems of this particular period of time. This style allows me to have that freedom of expression.

“True art always causes an emotion in the spectator. When I succeed in transmitting the feeling I want to reflect in my painting to the viewer then I feel I have achieved my goal.””

She often deals with women’s emotional states in her work.

“Capturing the emotions and feelings reflected in a face is a challenge. I achieve feeling THROUGH a painting. Reflecting the model’s expression of joy, sadness, excitement, sensuality, for me is a challenge that I like.”

When dealing with women subjects she uses eroticism to capture mood and atmosphere.

“Why not? These feelings are part of human beings.”

After all, she said, seduction and mysticism are well known ways to captivate viewers.

“There are many ways to convey eroticism,” she said. “All of Georgia O’Keefe’s work is wrapped in eroticism and sensuality in a very subliminal way. Then there are the very criticized erotic drawings of (Gustave) Courbet’s realism, which is not my message, nor my style. I prefer the model of the painting have the expression and leave the rest to the imagination.

Benn’s imagination sometimes supplies the human figures in her work. Other times she works from live models.

“The imaginary models are easier to work with. When one makes a painting of a live model, more is known by friends and family, so the level of accuracy has to be higher, which is more difficult. Normally everyone has a mental image of how we see ourselves, so to satisfy the model and also make the painting in your style, it’s quite a challenge.”

She makes her paintings directly on wood and enjoys the texture the surface gives her work.

“I really like how the lines of wood are mixed inside the face of my paintings. When I paint on canvas, the backgrounds go with the personality of the models. For example, I painted a friend who is a metal sculptor, so her surroundings have to be where she was born here in the USA and what she does.”

Visit http://www.artistamorera.com.

Read more of Leo Adam Biga’s work at leoadambiga.com.