An award winning, internationally recognized artist, April Bending has shown in Tokyo, Istanbul, New York City, Miami, Toronto, Berlin, Beijing, Shanghai, Singapore, and the Cayman Islands.

While teaching art at the University of the Cayman Islands Bending founded "Inside Art", painting programme for the prisons in the Cayman Islands. She also coordinated the National Gallery of the Cayman Islands' “Outreach Programmes” for many years.

Articles on her work appear in newspapers and magazines in Canada, the U.S.A. and Cayman. A list can be found on her website, AprilBending.com

Classically trained while earning a BFA at the University of Alberta, Canada Bending found that she enjoyed abstracting her ideas and developed a passion for using textured layers.

Her work is in the collections of the National Gallery of the Cayman Islands, the Cayman Islands National Museum, Andreas Ugland, and Appleby Spurling Hunter as well as private collections in Japan, Bermuda, Italy, Switzerland, Canada, the U.S.A and the Cayman Islands.

Bending has been nominated for the Premier’s Award for Excellence in the Arts in Canada; has won an Ontario Art Council Award, the Banner Award for National Heroes Day in the Cayman Islands, and the Book Cover Award for New Art International, a contemporary compendium of painters. The National Gallery of the Cayman Islands honored her at the Collection Induction Evening held to recognize artists whose work had been purchased.

April Bending - Artist Statement

“On summer nights I would sit on the porch with my Step-dad, smoke cigars, drink whiskey, and chat. This show is an homage to those wonderful memories.

Painting from memory, not real life, allows me to filter out the non-essentials creating an abstracted image, evoking an emotional response.

I often use a limited palette to draw focus to that image in much the same way a black and white photograph creates focus, thus avoiding the distraction of a myriad of colours. Because colours do evoke emotions, I use simple monochromatic schemes to set the mood.”