Gordon Bennett “This World Is Not My Home” and Mia Boe “Suspicion is proof enough”

• Eden Fiske

I’ve seen the shows twice now. The first time, a swarming opening—well deserved in my opinion. The second, on a quiet afternoon alone. The shifting tempos of Mia Boe and Gordon Bennett’s paintings hum against the white backdrop of the gallery walls and against each other as I move between the two small rooms of Sutton Gallery. Later I’ll hum the closing chorus to Albert E. Brumley’s “This World Is Not My Home,” the gospel song that shares its title with Gordon’s show. The song’s haunting sweetness sticks in my head:

Just up in gloryland, we’ll live eternally,
the saints on every hand are shouting victory,
their songs of sweetest praise drift back from heaven’s shore,
and I can’t feel at home in this world anymore.

Much like the song, Mia and Gordon’s paintings traverse territories of longing and belonging. Through their ability to speak to the domestic and existential within the same breath, they share a distinctive quality: transporting the viewer further into their landscapes, where their eye can shift and wander. There is a cool distance and a personal familiarity that emanates from the way each artist represents the land and the vignettes that puncture that range. Each piece drives my vision across its surface. In the two artists’ landscapes I scour for fragments of a whole and instead find something more akin to a mirror or a dream. I come back to this again and again.