Above is the cover of the latest book, Midnight Friends: Scratchboard Art. It's all black and white engravings other than a few color pictures at the end in the preview section hinting at books to be released, such as Mezzy. That's an art book organized under the auspices of the protagonist named Mezzy, with mesmerizing eyes that can trance us out and take us into his dreams. The beginning of the book portrays scenes from his surreal waking life and the rest of it is his dreams. 

Making some of the more abstract scratchboard art was a rhythmic experience, expressively striking the black surface with steel wood. Sometimes the steel wool pounded and stroked the thin board free form, making its own music; sometimes the movement of my hands was a dance to music. I favored engraving the darkness to the rhythm of my own music, the Sound Animal band. 

Why is this website called Sound Animal and this is about art? Well, that's really a logistical website thing, and a journey of a multi-disciplinary artist. I have lots of other writing other than the novel that's featured on this website, too, but I chose to forefront that one here because it's about psych rock musicians, so it fits the music theme. My art, though? That's a stretch. I know. Logistics are weird. I should probably make a video with art soon that includes my music over it and it all comes together, voila! If you want to go to just my art website, it's Midnight Friends. 

This visual art section of the site is unrelated to most of the imagery on associated with Sound Animal band singles and albums, though some of those music covers are my photographic art or mixed media. I don't claim the rest of the cover art for Sound Animal as fully my manual creation. However,  I've been a visual artist since youth and heavily involved in the art scene. For example, I co-ran an art gallery in Montevallo, Alabama called Four Winds, I was art director of the multi-media literary magazine Mad Hatters Review, I was both painting and photography judge for an international contest, and I published other people's art in Exclusive Magazine and LucidPlay Publications. My art has been published in many magazines and anthologies, often on covers and features; I was The Times Journal of Photography's World Class Photographer. I had many shows, including Reality Burn!, which toured the Spanish Levant for years. 

I've always alternating between various forms of creativity including music, poetry, fiction, video, painting, printmaking, photographic art, and so on. This site was designed for the Sound Animal band, and it thus includes the psych rock music related novel, Floating on Secrets, but I quit recording music a few years ago; what I made was put out by online labels. I teach fiction and poetry writing as well as editing manuscripts, so I periodically focus on that entirely before returning to one of the creative modalities. The current pursuit is visual art books. 

The first book, Midnight Friends, is black and white scratchboard art, mostly standalone but also abstract comics and an illustrated story. Many of the surreal pieces are ambiguous and are accompanied by a variety of people's contrasting interpretations of what's going on.

The next book, Mezzy, also includes some interpretations. Many of the standalone pieces in this one began as proof pages for Midnight Friends, some of which ended up in that book and some of which didn't. I transformed the proof pages in various ways, like coloring with markers or oil pastels, collaging with construction paper borders, and cutting out new characters from the pages, and adding in the Mezzy character. Those are interspersed with drawn portraits of Mezzy, an abstract comic in white gel pen, and a graphic story. 

The art can be purchased or commissioned for album covers, book covers, etc.

You can see more, including the blog and find links to stores featuring the art printed on clothing and other goods at my art website, Midnight Friends. Most of the images in the public mini-portfolio below are in Mezzy, a book that will come out in 2027. Magazines etc can email me for the private portfolio page on this site.

My Instagram SoundtheAnimal is also now devoted to the art and my Facebook page, Tantra Bensko Author also keeps fans up to date with the latest books, which are now visual, though the ones that were released in the past were psychological suspense. People who like that art form may enjoy my Pinterest board Scratchboard Art.

Contact me by email to say hi?

This Amazon review in the UK isn't shown on Amazon.com, so it's quoted in full here.

Tantra Bensko’s latest book is a refreshing delight. Her art is sweetly compelling. Who could fail to love the little face in the picture at the top of page 7? I want friends like these - and not just at midnight! Although her artistic style is all her own, 

I am occasionally reminded of the illustrations of Aubrey Beardsley, of whom I am also a fan. I am also very much psychologically invested in the concept - and shall we say, the reality, of magic realism. “I don’t know how pictures get along with one another when I’m not looking. Some of them prefer being alone.” 

Tantra’s idea to include her online friends’ interpretations of pieces of her art make for intriguing reading. How many different views we hold! The variety of perspectives put me in mind of the tale of Indra’s Net. We each of us are all looking out at infinity and there are an infinite number of us to do the looking. The writing in Midnight Friends inspires me - p.12 “Reach out to touch whatever visuals you conjure up in your own hypnagogia…” - and delights me. 

Tantra’s writing often feels like the literary equivalent of deliciously falling into a painting by Magritte - “…in these houses, what comes out of the chimney is - increasingly smaller houses.” Although the artwork in this book variously makes me think of Beardsley, Klee and Chagall, still Tantra’s artistic vision is all her own - and she has constructed a world into which I gladly tumble. The poem “After Dark” is astonishingly moving and the abstract comic “Squigs” also touches my heart. 

When I finished reading the “Illustrated Pseudo-Story” entitled “Lapse” I was left longing to hear more about the flower-eyed people and their strange world. The illustrations are vibrant and so full of life, as are the many animal portraits throughout the book. They are simply exquisite. The abstract works in the piece entitled “Forces” are utterly sublime. They move and dance on the page. There are also oil pastel works, which I adore. 

Tantra Bensko’s book is one which I shall treasure, for an infinity to come.

– 
Wendy Patterson

Mezzy is the next art book. It's ready to go, except for some interpretations of ambiguous art that I enjoy gathering on social media and sharing into the book pages. But Mezzy won't be released until well into 2027. Mezzy is a surreal creature who is the organizing principle of the pages. At first we see him in his “normal” waking state going about his life and beginning to morph increasingly as he falls into sleeps and dreams the rest of the book. Sometimes he pops into the dreams, sometimes they're all about him, sometimes he just observes them like movies or glimpses them like single momentary hypnagogic images.

The book is a full color expansion of the Midnight Friends universe. Completely new images abound. However, much of it repurposes the Midnight Friends book proofs to transform them into something new. Collages of the characters bring out new sides of them in playful and tense dramatic scenes. My hope is to continue to expand that liminal dreamlike Midnight world with other books and classes. 

I love teaching people to make scratchboard art and collages with that. I like to help people break past creativity blocks and to process deep feelings and get back into a spirit of play. One of the books in progress is interactive and another is a graphic novel. Prank the Bellhop, which is the graphic tale in Mezzy, is a spin off of that graphic novel, which is called Spam Hotel.