Gary Benfield

”The purpose of painting is to surprise and delight the spectator.  In doing so our prosaic view of the world is challenged and changed, for the better.

Gary Benfields work does this for us in an apparently effortless way.  His skill as a draughtsman compels us to look at the world differently.  Multiple perspectives are subtly melded together, views are transformed and transfused with colours, textures and tones.  We are manouvered into evocations of space and places we would dearly like to inhabit, not as fantasy or dream but rather as a very real and beautiful part of this our waking world”

Michael Dover Robinson BA (Hons) Dip(HD) Slade Scholar

I cannot remember a time without drawing.  It was natural for me as a child to use both my hands when painting and drawing and this ambidexterity has remained with me in my adult life as an artist.  I love the beauty of the line and I use these skills to create and transform inert materials into images of beauty and romance.

There are aspects of our lives, our existence and experience which remain as a constant, not subject to historical variation.  We fall in love, have children and experience a whole gamut of emotions as humans always have.  We have always sought to express these fundamental experiences in an aesthetic manner, through painting and poetry.  As an artist it is this imaginative role in transforming materials - paint, graphite, charcoal - to create this aesthetic dimension which I love.

Gary Benfield