“And so it is with most of the paintings by Gisèle and Monique Benoit: moments of grace, love stories, moments of absolute truth. No artifice or cheating in these scenes of the intimate life of their animals, with the scent of saga. Everything is lovingly observed and meticulously composed. Life throbs, captured as if suspended in the fleeting and natural moment. I am thinking both of Japanese ukiyo-é and of Francis of Assisi, of John Audubon and Grey Owl, but without losing sight of the exceptional authenticity of the Benoit painters, who know so well how to show us, each in their own way,
animals in Nature quietly surprised. Their Bestiary returns their world to the paradise that once was our Earth, which has since been badly abused.”
Guy Robert, writer and art historian