Benjamin Warner was born in Cornwall in 1970. After graduating from Falmouth School of Art & Design, he moved to London to pursue a career in Illustration. His first exhibition as a painter came in 2005, the same year of his first show with Beside the Wave in Falmouth, Cornwall.
Benjamin’s work sits between abstraction and representation with beautifully atmospheric paintings depicting both landscape and urban scenes. With a complex knowledge of his medium, Benjamin’s handling of oil paint shows a level of history within the works themselves. Often working in monochromatic palettes, Benjamin’s paintings are full of depth and he captures the essence of a place beautifully. His paintings have become highly collected across the UK and internationally.
“I strive to produce timeless refined paintings. I am very interested in surface quality, whether it is crusty impasto brush marks, or thin scraped back parts of the painting revealing the tooth of the canvas. With colour sitting in the recesses of the paint, the surface becomes a map or history of the painting. I also like to use degraded colour, and creating optical colours with glazes and scumbles.
For me the essence of painting is all about the paint itself, its colour and texture. The physicality of paint is equally as important as the depiction of place. My technique for applying the medium rarely results in visible brushstrokes, lending an air of obliqueness to the process as well as the subject. This ambiguity is further enhanced by my preference for painting at the margins of the day.”
