Away Painting

American-born artist living in Luxembourg. His work explores the illusion of the self as distinct from the world, and the dissolution and evaporation of being. He is interested in negation as separate from being but not equal to nothing: negation of meaning, negation of identity, negation of traditional methods of portraiture. Benjamin has lived in Europe, Japan, and the US, and his work is held in private collections in all of these locations. He is artistically influenced by everything from Japanese traditional ukiyo-e to Baroque art (esp. Caravaggio) to global contemporary art, porcelain pottery, album covers, graffiti, cartography, advertising, Hubble telescope imagery, found art and font design. Benjamin is a self-taught artist and working father. He paints in the evening after putting his daughter to bed. The nocturnal nature of his painting shows in the dark background hues and bright foreground colours he favours in his art.