Child characters are an iconic element in my art and have evolved as a visual signature. A child’s innocence invites the viewer to safely participate, allowing themselves to recall undercurrents of older and sometimes unsettlingly familiar perspectives. Innocence and experience rarely pair unless placed in opposition. As one grows, the absence of our naïveté and the shortening of our childhood are defined as “growth.” As we age, our simplicity appears to die. But experience and innocence do not always have to reconcile in disagreement in this way.
I explore impulses universal to any stage of life by inviting viewers to think of childhood as a blueprint—not a separate, non-existent entity occasionally revisited in a photo album. I seek to define growth not as the absence of simplicity, but as the presence of both a life lived and a childhood referenced. My work calls upon every adult to refer to their child self as though it is a living being, trapped in a time capsule.

Artist Angelique Benicio is a painter and sculptor with professional experience in both the United States and Europe. She grew up in the middle of a cedar forest on the outskirts of a small town in Cromwell, Connecticut. Angelique currently lives and works in the San Francisco Bay Area.