Home - Scott Wilmot Bennett

Ross "Painting the Town" 2013 Art Competition

Scott's painting The Undiscovered Country was awarded Commendation.

Entrants are assigned an aspect of the village of Ross by public ballot. Scott's site was the four corners area of Ross, including the cenotaph.

The annual exhibition is hosted at the Man O' Ross Hotel.

The Undiscovered Country
Cenotaph/Ross/Tasmania
The Undiscovered Country
Scott Bennett
2013
36"x24"
Acrylic on linen
Private collection

Artist statement

The Undiscovered Country

The title comes from Hamlets soliloquy in Act 3 scene 1, that begins with the famous phrase, "To be, or not to be, that is the question":

Whether 'tis Nobler in the mind to suffer
The Slings and Arrows of outrageous Fortune,
Or to take Arms against a Sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them: to die, to sleep
No more; and by a sleep, to say we end
The Heart-ache, and the thousand Natural shocks
That Flesh is heir to? 'Tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To die to sleep,
To sleep, perchance to Dream; Aye, there's the rub,
For in that sleep of death, what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause. There's the respect
That makes Calamity of so long life...

To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovered Country, from whose bourn
No Traveller returns, Puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have,
Than fly to others that we know not of.

Thus Conscience does make Cowards of us all,
And thus the Native hue of Resolution
Is sicklied o'er, with the pale cast of Thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment,
With this regard their Currents turn awry,
And lose the name of Action...