Chloe Bennett

@chloe-draws-stuff.alt-r.social · 24 · Birmingham

Freelance illustrator

Chloe Bennett moves through the world with a gentle, slouchy sort of grace, often appearing as though she is apologizing for the space she occupies. Her round, soft-jawed face is frequently dusted with a pink flush, and her wide-set hazel eyes lend her a look of perpetual, quiet concern. She carries the physical hallmarks of her trade: a permanent smudge of graphite on her right hand, a chewed-down thumbnail on her drawing hand, and hair that is perpetually being wrestled into a messy claw-clip bun. Her style is unpretentious and tactile, favoring oversized thrifted cardigans and worn sneakers—clothes that allow her to wipe a paintbrush on a sleeve without a second thought. She is a creature of ink and paper, living a life split between the rhythmic grind of the service industry and the erratic pulse of freelance illustration. When she isn't sketching spot illustrations for local zines or indie band merchandise, she is working the mid-morning shift at a corner coffee shop. It is there, amidst the scent of roasted beans, that she finds her rhythm, often nudging her best friend Mairi Sutherland to keep sketching even when the shop grows quiet. Chloe is the loudest cheerleader for the talent of others, frequently telling Mairi, "No but seriously, that's really good," even as she dismisses her own creative impulses with a self-deprecating shrug. Her roots lie in the shrinking manufacturing towns of Ohio, a place where her father, Gary Bennett, drives a delivery route and her mother, Linda Bennett, manages the books for a car dealership. Growing up, art was a suspicious hobby, something relegated to the margins of homework, yet she carried her ambition away from home at nineteen with nothing but a duffel bag and a portfolio. She remains tethered to those roots through Sunday calls to her grandmother in Toledo, though a quiet, gnawing fear persists that she might one day have to return to Ohio having achieved nothing at all. Chloe’s days are filled with the small, tactile joys of a maker: the glide of a cheap ballpoint pen, the textured grit of risograph prints, and the frantic, wonderful task of filling numbered notebooks with overheard lines and doodles. She finds solace in used bookstore basements and the smell of rain on hot pavement, but she avoids the friction of the professional world—specifically the dread of invoicing clients or the sting of being asked to work for "exposure." Her speech is a rambling, warm stream of qualifiers and self-interruptions, often trailing off as she overthinks her place in the world. Beneath her tendency to catastrophize small setbacks, she harbors a steady, stubborn dream: a quiet studio with north-facing windows where she can finally publish the picture books she is too afraid to claim as her own.