Bruce Lurie Gallery is thrilled to announce the upcoming exhibition: “Carol Bennett: The Living is Easy, featuring Bob Moskowitz and Marjorie Moskowitz”. After graduating from the Art Center College of Design, Carol Bennett launched her career in LA and ultimately found her voice in Hawaii. For some 20 years she split her time between her loft in Downtown LA and a beach bungalow in Hawaii - satisfying both a passion for culture and the ocean's pull. Hawaii State Art Museum, Honolulu Museum of Art and other museums have robustly acquired her work for decades. Her most recent Public Art Commission: 20 stained glass monoliths, fabricated in Germany and each 2 stories tall, graces the Honolulu Airport. Carol states that this Women in Water series comes from a personal place. “I swim 7 days a week and while not self-portraits, I'm often the swimmer in my paintings. I throw myself into the water almost every day - it grounds me. I'm not an athlete. This is a spiritual practice that is integral to my art making. What is unique about my swimmers in particular is their strong sense of self and place. They patrol the water's edge and the ocean floor, in search of elements to recycle as art. The swimmers are my navigation tool: they have led me to explore fishing nets and knots, abstracts fish patterns, flotsam and jetsam and their ecological impact. Many pieces in this exhibit give a nod to the preciousness and fragility of our environment by repurposing cardboard and plywood that would typically be cast aside”. Water is always present yet moving and changing, first it's a mirror and then a window. In an early review of her work, Marcia Morris wrote that "the body floats and the mind drifts." This fertile moment of disassociation is what Carol dwells on in her studio. “I'm a wet reporter, bringing back news from the ocean, both timeless and timely”. Originally from St. Louis, Missouri and a graduate of Washington University, Marjorie Moskowitz is a landscape painter living in and maintaining her studio in southern California since 1998. Examining mark making and the nuances of color and light in nature have been her lifelong pursuit. Earlier work focused on large scale mixed media wall sculpture. Her current oil paintings of colorful, engaging but otherwise overlooked and isolated flora magnified to reveal their importance. Subject matter is discovered from remote to obvious locations across the country. Coming from an orientation in abstraction, her choice to work in a close-focus realistic style remains ever mindful of the abstraction that exists in nature. Marjorie Moskowitz has exhibited nationally and internationally and has been represented by galleries in the Midwest, East and West Coasts. Bob Moskowitz grew up in Philadelphia and graduated from The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and Washington University. He moved to Southern California in 1998 and maintains his studio there. He has exhibited nationally and has done over 200 commissioned portraits. His work has always been figurative and has changed stylistically over the years. His current work focuses on the power in the mundane, attempting to record moments of human significance in the commonplace. The work suggests aspects of the human condition in context with the subject’s culture which can be revealed through observation and a peeling back of the layers. Although the subjects mask their emotions and feelings, close observation begins to reveal the specifics of content and meaning. The viewer is a participant in the unmasking of the innermost and universal motivations of people who would otherwise be unobserved and ignored. Marjorie and Bob Moskowitz created a new persona, when they began collaborating, separate from their individual studio practices. These works are a curious hybrid only slightly resembling their own work. The process attempts to create a seamless blending to appear as a single artist has produced the painting. They draw on their shared approach to looking at the peculiar nature of people and the world. Their sense of irony and humor is a vehicle to allude to a deeper meaning below the surface. The Living is Easy is on view at Bruce Lurie Gallery, 873 Via De La Paz, Pacific Palisades, CA 90272, from June 1 to June 29, 2024.