Benjamin James – Anniversary Art Exhibition – Artist Portfolio Magazine

• Artist Portfolio Magazine – 5 Year Anniversary Art Exhibition
• Benjamin James – Sylmar, CA

A photographer friend of mine once told me that “photographers are just lazy painters.” The tongue-in-cheek comment made me think about the painter’s job in the post-photograph world. I believe that part of my painter’s journey is to go into my own camera obscura and emerge to present a living and emotive, long-exposure image. I intend the “camera” to be the fields of our individual sensations, thoughts, feelings and experiences. I see each of my paintings as representing both singular moments and the sum of those moments coalescing in a living context.
To put it simply and unabashedly, I love the process of representing our world of color and life in paint. At the core I believe that my desire to paint en plein air is a reflection of the desire to stand in awe of the power of the Sun and the life it provides; however, the direct approach is often perilous. The delicate nature of our senses requires us to divert our gaze to the world around us to find the implicit and lived context of the Sun’s vibrance. I seek to observe my subjects using my bodily sensations, specifically my spine, as a guide to snatch some of the Sun’s pale fire and distill it into paint.