Charcoal-covered hand of artist Lu Bennett in the studio with a figurative drawing in progress behind it.
Black and white portrait of Australian artist Lu Bennett in her drawing studio.

It begins with the figure.

For me the compulsion is the question. Drawing is how I think through an inquiry I didn't know I was asking.

Working primarily in charcoal on paper, I am interested in what survives: the marks that resist erasure, the spaces where form begins to dissolve, and the point at which a figure becomes the residue of sustained attention.

Figures emerge through accumulation and erosion, carrying the archaeological traces of earlier gestures.

Since 2020, this practice has developed through long-term online collaboration with life models around the world. Drawing across time zones and distance has fundamentally changed how I think about presence. Rather than treating separation as a limitation, I have come to see it as a condition that reveals how attention, trust, and perception persist across geography and mediated encounter.

Charcoal is central to my practice. It’s intimate and endlessly responsive. Every stick has its own character. I come to know them by touch.

By the end of a session my hands are black. There is usually a smudge somewhere on my face or shirt, and fingerprints find their way onto door handles and teacups. Drawing doesn't stop at the edge of the paper.

The sinew of Brett Whiteley's figurative line, the landscape observation of John Olsen, and the leftovers of studying archaeology at university continue to shape my thinking.

My current work extends these ideas through an emerging inquiry into the body and sacred architecture, exploring how each drawing might accumulate memory and function as a threshold, performing the psychological movement of sacred architecture.

Everything you wanted to ask, and a few things you probably didn't.

FAQs

Everyone is interesting if you ask the right questions.