Spectacles by Benji Thomas
20th November to SATURDAY, 9th FEBRUARY 2018
Open eve Thursday, 10th January 2019 7-9pm
Spectacles showcases my ongoing attempt to uncover the surreal within the real. Photographing subjects that suggest an alternate narrative or existence, I use that as a vehicle for imagination, using an unpredictable painting process to transform the image and re-discover it.
Benji and his work can be seen in last year’s Landscape Artist of the year competition!!
https://www.cassart.co.uk/blog/benjamin_thomas_wins_heat_5_of_sky_arts_landscape_artist_of_the_year_2017.htm
website: http://www.benjithomas.com
instagram: benjithomasart
Extended info
I am a very recent Fine Art graduate from Loughborough University, beginning a career as a practicing artist. My work is driven by curiosity and the need to observe, existing as a kind of continual research into image-making. Often, I’m searching for when banal components are coming together in a moment to create something that is strange or ‘other’ in some way.
Growing up using traditional watercolours, I turned to ink at university as a way of reconnecting with this after continued failure with oil paint. The interaction of ink and household bleach now forms the core of my material process, an interaction that is inherently unstable and impossible to completely control. Over the last two years I have found ways to harness this, fusing a traditional watercolour method with chemical anarchy. This inevitably creates new forms and new directions, and each painting is made through a series of frenzied discoveries.
The subjects of my paintings are incidental: I paint from my own photographs, and I never stage anything, nor go looking. I could choose to photograph something because it suggests a story, because of a certain light, or because it exists only in that moment. Broadly, my paintings seek to investigate what lies beneath the surface of an image, and to find the big within the small.