Amy Bennett’s exhibition “Time Speeds Up” is showing in New York at Ameringer McEnery Yohe through October 8. Bennett, who works in Beacon, New York, paints her landscapes after dioramas she’s painstakingly constructed at a 1/500 scale. She carves valleys and rivers into Styrofoam and freckles the map with wooden houses and wiry trees; over time, she adds farmland, grocery stores, and schools. “The creation and gradual alterations of these models allow Bennett to indulge a novelistic sensibility,” Eleanor Heartney writes in an essay to accompany the exhibition. “The settings she selects are precisely those in which the American ideals of freedom and security clash.”

Amy Bennett, Lowlands, 2016, oil on canvas, 40″ x 56″.

Sweetness in the Air, 2016, oil on canvas, 20 1/8″ x 28″.

Lowlands, 2016, oil on canvas, 40″ x 56″.

This Is the Before (from Diptych IV), 2014/2015, monotype, 5″ x 7″.

And Then (from Diptych IV), 2014/2015, monotype, 5″ x 7″.

This Is the Before (from Diptych V), 2014/2015, monotype, 5″ x 7″.

This Is the Before (from Diptych VI), 2014/2015, monotype, 5″ x 7″.