Bena resident Rod Bennett was named the 2016 Gloucester Daffodil Festival Print Artist. His winning artwork was unveiled Saturday evening during a reception at Gloucester Arts on Main.

Bennett’s passion for art began as a child as he found refuge from a turbulent household by drawing on lined notebook paper, kept in an upper cabinet in the kitchen, a release stated. By age eight, he was able to reproduce imagery he found in literature book illustrations and at 13, was selling pencil portraits of period pop music icons to classmates at school.

Bennett discovered painting in high school, falling in love with the works of Georgia O’Keefe and Thomas Hart Benton. He went on to study art and painting at Virginia Wesleyan College, Virginia Beach, and under Barclay Sheaks, a mid-Atlantic regionalist painter.

Bennett works out of his studio in Gloucester and in his wood shop in Denbigh.

He will be available in the court circle, along with his signed, limited edition prints at th...