Artist Gale Bennett remembered as bigger than life

The primary colors are red, blue and yellow. They were the only paints, along with white, which Gale Bennett used. But his work is alive with many vivid hues and is successful both artistically and commercially, in Fort Myers where he grew up and in France where he taught. He is also remembered as a local art teacher with a huge, generous heart.

COURTESY PHOTO Gale Bennett and Sasha with 'Aphrodite' in background "So many thousands of students have taken his classes," said Sanibel resident Sheila Hoen, Bennett's student since 2001. "I think he loved teaching - loved it. And people loved him for that. He made everyone feel, and do, their very best work."

Bennett, 68, died Easter Sunday in Cape Coral after a stroke, but he had battled illness for some time. He had heart surgery in 1998 and suffered from brain tumors the last year of his life - although his wife Cello said he produced more than 30 paintings in 2007, which was close to his yearly average. For Bennett the prolific output came along with his prolific thirst for life.

He pursued teaching, music criticism and later an advertising agency and helped bring to town Paul Nader, the music director of the Southwest Florida Symphony, said Pamela Templeton, a friend and patron of the arts.

"He was a great friend of the symphony for many years plus an incredible art teacher," she said. "He's kind of a renaissance man, you know."

Bennett opened a school called ArtStudy in Giverny, France, in 1996, where he spent six months every year. There, he took students to paint in Impressionist artist Claude Monet's garden.

"Painting Monet's pond in the evening light," Hoen said. "It was magical."

Mrs. Bennett said she met her husband when they spoke on the phone about a classical music critique he wrote for The News- Press. She was in Berlin, he in France.

"He asked me when he met me at the airport to marry him and I said 'Maybe,'" Mrs. Bennett said.

They celebrated a fifth wedding anniversary the Friday before he died. Soon after, Mrs. Bennett started a triptych - three paintings connected in theme - about her husband called "Landscape of his life." Like Mr. Bennett did for most of his life, she will also use acrylic paints.

"He was what the French call a Bon Vivant," she said. "He loved good food, good wine, good dancing and music. He loved to talk about religion and politics…all the things that are dangerous to talk about."

In the 1960s, Bennett critiqued David Robinson, former president of Edison College, for his tenor part in Handel's Messiah with the Fort Myers Symphony.

"It was a fair critique and he was absolutely right about it," he said. "In everything he did he was very honest."

Robinson was an art student of Bennett's for 15 years after he retired from Edison. Now he said he's teaching his 10 grandchildren some of the things Bennett taught him.

"He said all you have to do is look at nature to get your structure, your form, your color," Robinson said. "All you have to do is look at nature - it lines up things in counterpoint, in form, in balance. I can honestly say when I began taking painting from him it's like having cataracts lifted from your eyes. It just makes you alive to color. He just had a tremendous influence over his students."

"Nature never ends," a quote by Monet, will be inscribed on his gravestone.

He is also survived by his daughter Anna Bennett of Jupiter, and his stepson Christopher Mioni of Palo Alto, Calif. A celebration of Gale's life will be held on Sunday, April 27, from 2 to 4 pm at BIGARTS, Sanibel. In his memory contributions may be made to Hope Hospice, 8470 Health Park Circle, Ft. Myers 33908, to BIGARTS, Sanibel 33957, to the Alliance for the Arts, 10091 McGregor Bl., Ft. Myers 33919, or to the Southwest Florida Symphony, 4560 Via Royale, Ft. Myers 33919. Arrangements are being made by Fort Myers Memorial Gardens Funeral Home, 1589 Colonial Blvd, Fort Myers (239) 926-0555. www.fortmyersmemorial.com