About Me

 

Biography

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Richard J Benbow is a multi-disciplinary artist based in the Big Apple. He attended the University of Salford in the UK between 2017 - 2022 completing a BA in Fine Art and an MA in Contemporary Fine Art, in which he wrote an 8000-word thesis named 'Walking in the World, Painting in the Present.' Benbow graduated with First-Class Honours and a Distinction. In 2018, as part of  his extra-curricular activities, he took part in Life Drawing classes and won the Howarth Life Drawing Prize, later travelling to Berlin with the bursary award. Benbow's current practice focuses predominantly on painting. He explores the local landscape and reacts to his environs; researching through photography, sketching & drawing in various mediums, utilising recording technology, satellite maps, note taking, poetry, sense connections to his surroundings, and psychological aspects such as dreams. Benbow then translates this information to produce various degrees of abstracted interpretations of the landscape.

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Artist Statement

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Richard J Benbow produces lyrical abstract paintings, carefully balancing calligraphic marks within the pictorial space of a non-traditional landscape format/ space. Benbow traces and tracks the performativity of the gesture and produces fluid abstractions that intuitively refer to experienced and semi-imagined landscape formed from thoughts linked to sense connections, time, place, historical, and geographical narratives.

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The protection of our environment is paramount in this age of climate uncertainty, species extinction, and plastic pollution. Benbow experienced the landscape of his homeland  : rolling hills, valley floors, ancient woodlands, farmsteads and the tide and flow of waterways. These vistas invigorated and inspired him. However, he is also scared, and ill-at-ease with the impact humans have on the planet and what lies before us in this near future.  Benbow experienced the parochial quietitude of suburbia and caused scandal and upheaval.  He explored the rural, and the edgelands, traversed the city and walked countless streets finding community amongst chaos and solitude among people.

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Line, colour, tone, gestural brushstrokes are his weapons to mobilise his message. Large brushes produce sweeping brush marks, the trajectory of which move across, support, and echo his traverse through topographical terrains, a symbiotic connection to the earth and soil. Harmony is balanced through a lyrical, poetic, and abstract language of semiotics. Signs and signifiers juxtapose on a flat/ two-dimensional surface.

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Variety in scale is important. Painting on a large support enthuses him, as it frees up gesture and can be more playful. Experimentation and play are vital. Benbow builds up layers from an initial wash (thinned down acrylic) to create a background for painting into. A variety of sizes of brushes helps Benbow to create gestural marks and compositional frameworks. Working in acrylic has become his main medium. Experimenting with the viscosity of the paint, layering colour, playing with the opacity and translucency of the paint, and choosing pigments, and tonal values is a natural form of expression and Benbow's primary visual language.

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Benbow's research practice commences by the simple act of walking. He stakes out his territory.  He is a lyrical loiterer. Benbow's inspiration springs from the absorption of the landscape/ cityscape through his senses – touch, seeing, hearing, and feeling, in a spiritual sense: for our connection to the land is deeper than purely physical, the memories we gather vibrate and reverberate within our hearts and minds remaining an echo of pilgrimage. Benbow will often record his walks through research methods such as photography, sketching & drawing, video, note-taking and writing poetical prose. This rich source of research is retrospectively studied and the material is then translated  into often large acrylic paintings. Conveying his message via methodology and through research interests into the art form of this painting practice is his task.

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The power of abstraction is his tool in configuring his message. Benbow is interested in psychogeography. The world around him is interpreted through thought, philosophy, and as an idea. Paradoxically, the world appears in a concrete existence; however, He does not attempt to represent external reality but seeks to portray the world through shapes, colours, and tonal values. Rural/ suburban/urban districts, the edgelands, where the city meets the countryside, are his primary subjects.

 

Benbow's work is historically inspired by artists including Victor Pasmore, Ivon Hitchen, Albert Irvin, Peter Lanyon, and Adrian Berg. As well as being inspired by contemporary artists such as Shara Hughes’ forms and colour layers and Julie Mehretu’s mark making, layering, and political and social influences in her work. By studying these artists techniques and manner of observing and painting the landscape, Benbow can contextualise his work through the observations of their compositions, use of colour, and brushmarks.  The post-impressionists and Vincent Van Gogh have always been one of Benbow's founding inspirations, as has the colourist-inspired Yorkshire landscapes of David Hockney, the landscapes of West Lancashire and Wigan Borough, his childhood village of Appley Bridge (The Little Apple) and the influence of the esteemed Theodore Major and other local artists.

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In common with Hockney and Van Gogh in their stays in Normandy and Arles respectively, (and before his big move to New York) Benbow walked and explored his local vicinity, like they before him, and he was inspired by what was on his doorstep. Wandering alone, and taking in what he sees before him enables Benbow to connect with the architecture/nature in his environment. The latter confronting Benbow with aspects of cultural appropriation in referencing Aboriginal Art. Benbow captures inspiration, not just in the visual sense but also the spiritual connecting  the people to the land and aspects of ancient cultures and practices such as ‘walkabout’ and ‘Dreamtime.’ Benbow has found that spending time in nature has been a rite of passage, like the young Aboriginals sent out into the outback and left to survive, in common with them he has harmonised with nature, and the spirits of the trees, plants, and animals have entered his own dream-world and in-turn cleansed his own psyche and spirit.  

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In the past, Benbow has referenced cartographic influences from paper maps to GPS. Using maps as a resource material enables him to create a framework for a composition. Benbow uses places where he has recently walked or visited in which his memories and experiences are fresh. He will often revisit these sites repeatedly. Benbow paints out the structure of the composition and then works into the composition over several sessions. Depending on the size of the surface the paintings can be rendered relatively quickly or take many hours or days to reach completion.