Gala Bent is an artist who pursues a hybrid mix of studio-based practice and project-based illustration with inspiration supplied by science, music, theology, poetry and contemplation of natural forms.

She received her MFA in Interdisciplinary Visual Arts from State University of New York at Buffalo (SUNY) Buffalo, New York in 1999 and has exhibited her work nationally ever since. Bent has been a finalist for the Neddy Award in 2012, and was awarded the Westfjords Residency, in Þingeri, Iceland in 2017. Her work can be found in the Microsoft Art Collection, the Jordan Schnitzer Print Collection, Portland, OR, and the Washington State Art Collection as well as many private collections in the US and beyond.

Bent is currently full time faculty member at the Cornish College of the Arts and lives with her artist/photographer husband Zack Bent and her three sons in Seattle, WA.

I possess a nearly compulsive desire to draw. Because of this, drawing has become for me a handy tool for pragmatic thinking, psychological refuge and focused dreaming. The subjects that I draw are revisited over a lifetime of curiosity and a desire to peek beneath the surface of what is seen and known. As such, water and wind, plants, animals and geological forms, along with verbal, mathematical or architectural shorthand, appear again and again in shifting forms. Drawn patterns are ways that I continuously funnel my own appreciation of natural forms and movement into my work.

I am interested in the conversation between what is fixed and what is malleable, the cluttered edges of life that seem to challenge an ordered grid. I am interested in an epistemology that stems from a slow and steady observation of overlapping systems, whether in biological or geological inter-relatedness or the languages of science and mathematics, philosophy and religion. The relation of line to thought has a visceral connection for me in the ongoing project of living-in-the-world, where obstacles may resist tidy solutions, and where you sometimes must grab a pencil to explain yourself.

Microsoft Art Collection - Redmond, WA
Washington State Art Collection - Seattle, WA
Seattle Public Utilities Portable Works Collection ­- Seattle, WA
Swedish Hospital ­- Seattle, WA
Jordan Schnitzer Print Collection - Portland, OR
Taylor University - Upland, IN
Ball State University ­College of Arts ­- Muncie, IN
Peninsula College - Port Angeles, WA