Angela Bentley Fife

Angela Bentley Fife works with the viewer’s perception of stereotypes, roles, and expectations that surround us and shift with time. Fife questions cultural ideals and why emphasis is placed on certain characteristics both male and female. Bentley Fife often chooses to visually express these ideas through her feminine still life paintings.

Being surrounded by many sisters in her family, Bentley Fife’s paintings often take on a feminine quality. She enjoys including dresses and items that portray a certain aspect of a woman’s personality. In creating her paintings Bentley Fife constructs the pictures on panel, layering gesso underneath with broad brushes, which create texture in the background. After the gesso dries she begins to draw in graphite and slowly moves onto painting over the drawing, creating a value study. Covering the value study with thin glazes of liquin and oil paint, gives the work subtle gradual tones. She lastly works into the piece using solid thick brush strokes to add visual impact.

Graduating from the University of Utah in 1996 Bentley Fife has pursed her art career diligently entering numerous art shows. Her work has currently been featured in Utah’s prestigious Springville Museum’s Spring Salon show. She has also been featured in Art and Soup’s juried show and participated in art festivals around the country. Angela Bentley Fife continues to create in order to fulfill her “underlying drive and urge to paint, because of the physical process as well as the emotional development of a thought.”