After years of recreating the horrors of warfare and the terrifying effects of nuclear weaponry, an island-based painter has used his latest exhibition as a way of re-connecting with a more peaceful way of life.

Gary Bennett recently unveiled ‘Spirit of Place’, his latest collection of work, at the Hodgson Loom gallery, in Laxey.

Painted using a very fluid, watercolour-based technique, Gary’s paintings have a very ethereal, dark and forboding woodland-like feel to them that alter and change the closer you get to them or further you move away, with dark foregrounds being picked out by hints of colour and relief in the background.

The display of largely abstract paintings have been inspired by many things, such as the quieter pace of life of recent years, caused by the lockdowns and a desire to move away from creating distressing war imagery and re-connect with himself and his surroundings.

‘With this new body of work, I’ve been looking at the ordinary, the more closer to home,’ said Gary.

‘I guess that lock down made us look things and understand how important that the small things are.

‘I recently moved house into the country side, surrounded by woodland, and a lot of these paintings are my own desire to connect with it.

‘I felt the ancientness of the place, and in the morning, the sun rises over an old neolithic site, and shines through these beautiful trees, before setting over South Barrule.

‘Its a magical place and I was really drawn to it. I love living there and it really inspires me. Its a very peaceful place.

‘Its very inspirational and that really informed my pictures here. Its the spirit I wanted to recreate.

‘A lot of people have told me how powerful and resonant they find these pictures.

‘I suppose maybe that ordinary thing of the woodlands and so on, people start to connect to it and people have a psychological understanding of these pictures.

‘I feel like these pictures are inviting you in, but there is always a bit of light that brings you back out and lets you wander around the paintings.’

Its is that sense of light, shining through the darkness of the immediate foreground, that forms a large part of the inspiration behind the paintings.

An army veteran himself, Gary, who is originally from County Antrim, in Northern Ireland, has worked closely with several armed forces veterans charities over the past decade, helping to raise the profile and much-needed funds of many of these organisations and the people they help.

In 2013, Gary opened his exhibition ‘Shadow of the Bomb’, after being named as the official war artist for the British Nuclear Test Veterans.

His paintings were exhibited in the Houses of Commons, amongst other locations.

His other exhibitions include ‘Embers’, alongside fellow war artist Arabella Dorman, ‘Articles of War’ and a display for Combat Stress.

‘Being dubbed as a “war artist” can lead you to a very dark place,’ he said.

‘A lot of what I painted was based on my own experiences. I worked with a group called the British Nuclear Test veterans, and they felt that my pictures did not just look like war, but it felt like the reality of war too.

‘I got involved with various other charities, Combat stress and so on, but you can only do that for so long.

‘I did that for a few years and I enjoyed it. It was certainly a massive eye opener, and it did push my work. It challenged ne and the work was a challenge in itself. And it was certainly successful for them.

‘But after a number of years I felt the need to reconnect with myself and move away from that darkness.

‘My new home is somewhere where I could see that light shining through the trees in the morning and the sun setting in the evening, and I felt that colour started to come back into my life again.’