T O M  B E N J A M I N

BIOGRAPHY

I was brought up in Plumpton in Sussex which is a landscape of meadows, small woods and with the South Downs in the near distance. The landscape and particularly its woods remains one of my main subjects along with Cornwall and the Wiltshire Downs

As a boy I was completely obsessed by woodland. I loved the feeling of being surrounded by trees on all sides. The experience of being among the trees is visually intense; it is mysterious because you are continually looking through or past something to catch partial glimpses of something else.

Much of the art I admire, the work of Manet, Van Gogh, Constable or Andrew Wyeth, has a quality of seeming true to the way the world looks and yet seeing it in that moment as if seeing for the first time without preconceptions. It is this sense that sometimes an unexpected quality of light, viewpoint or atmosphere can catch you with your guard down and make you lose yourself in the intensity of a moment that draws me to paint. I prefer to paint in front of the subject. When working in front of a landscape every thing is in flux. The light and the weather are changing. Each brush mark has to work in colour tone and drawing. The fluidity of oil paint can stand as an equivalent for the shifting of light and of the changing nature of my response to the subject through the act of painting. I think that I am drawn to paint by a sense that I must make something that lasts from the experience of a moment. It’s an attempt to cheat time.

Contact
tom@tombenjamin.co.uk
www.tombenjamin.co.uk

One Man Shows:

2010 - Sarah O' Kane Fine Art at St Annes Galleries Lewes The Brighton Beach Paintings
2009 - Sarah O' Kane Fine Art at St Annes Galleries Lewes
2008 - HQ Gallery Lewes, East Sussex
2006 - HQ Gallery, Lewes, East Sussex
2005 - Portraits ,The Star Gallery, Lewes, East Sussex

2003 - The Star Gallery, Lewes, East Sussex

2002 - Bates Wells and Braithwaite, Cheapside, London

2000 - The Star Gallery, Lewes, East Sussex
1993 - Charleston Farmhouse, Firle, Lewes, Sussex

1992-94 - Gallery 10, Grosvenor St, London