Lois Bender’s Paintings and Prints offer fresh mixes of nature-based abstractions and explorations, using both imprints and direct painting styles. Her “WaterScapes” of rippling reflections and “Florascapes” of flower shadows and pentimenti have been part of her art practice since she began her Gardenspirits designs using the French traditional art of stenciling, named pochoir, with printmaking techniques. Nature and its various displays offers continuous inspiration. The choreography of contrasting silhouetted flower, plant and water forms all evoke the lyrical aura and afterglow of nature’s impact on us. Flora’s lush complex fluid reflections splintering into abstractions of rippling forms inspire her shimmering metallics and flow in her paintings. The surprise of discovery is invited in blending different mediums of drawing, watercolor, photography, and printmaking. GardenSpirits has been a unifying theme throughout her art career, inspired by her mother’s persona and her given name “Flora Bloom.” DNA, genealogy and etymology have brought passion, art, nature and gardens together. Her art practice reveals these interconnections, promoting the advocacy that Humanity must protect, appreciate and love Nature’s beauty and essence for our mutual survival.

With a BA from Hunter College and an MFA (Boston University), Lois entered the design fields, creating the brand GardenSpiritsNY Designs (est. in 1996) out of her art direction and graphic design backgrounds in the Gift Industry while working on the Godiva Chocolates Brand. Her work added a fresh synthesis of nature-based themes in gardens, landscapes, etc. Lois Bender’s studio and art practice is a “Garden in the Sky” growing among city skyscrapers. She’s a longtime New Yorker, who brings gardens and nature into an oasis of her home studio. She She has explored her themes at residencies in France, The Hamptons, NY,  as well as Skowhegan and the Women’s Studio Workshop. She teaches art and watercolor techniques in the Metro NY area and The Hamptons. She is an Adjunct Art Professor at Essex County College in Newark, NJ.