Tim Benson

My journey really began in 2001. I had been discouraged from representational painting whilst at art school, so it came as a surprise to me when a gallery wanted to show my large oil sky scrapes soon after I graduated. It was that experience that set the ball rolling for me and to be honest, I’ve never looked back since.

These days I mainly paint people, although I can’t resist the occasional landscape. There is something infinitely captivating about the human head, that keeps me coming back for more as a painter; there is absolutely nowhere to hide. We are all hard wired to read human faces, so we know whether a painted head is ‘correct’ or not, even if we’ve never encountered the subject.

SELFIE, ARMS BEHIND BACK

Of course the ‘correct’ that I’m talking about transcends the necessity for an accurately rendered painting, it requires something more than that; it demands an authenticity and humanity that is often lacking in painted portraits. This could manifest itself in the characteristic tilt of a head or the gleam of an eye. In other words, I try to add a small degree of caricature to my portraits, not so much as to change the fundamental nature of the sitter but just enough to bring to prominence what I find immediately engaging about a face when I first see it.

I use the same 6 oil colours for any painting. These are Cadmium Red, Lemon Yellow, Burnt Umber, Alizarin Crimson, Ultramarine Blue and Titanium White. From these I can mix nearly all of the other colours that I see in the world around me. I would always rather find the apposite colour from mixing rather than directly from a tube of paint.

WAITING

I use only 1 brush for any painting, this is typically a wide, flat bristle brush that allows me to ‘sculpt’ in thick paint. I try to break the head down into its requisite facets and planes. Further to this the large brush stops me from adding too much detail to the portrait rather, it forces me to reconcile complex areas such as eyes into the simplest of terms; 2 or 3 marks of accurately placed paint can say just as much as 30 small marks.

There is so much more to a meaningful portrait than the visual aesthetic. For me there needs to be a message that’s being conveyed. If the painting doesn’t engage the viewer on an emotive level then it really isn’t doing its job. So over the last few years I have painted portraits of people who’s stories and personal journeys are undeniably worth telling, stories of unspeakable hardship and suffering.

CLIFFORD, OUTREACH WORKER, TOTTENHAM

In 2015 I travelled to Sierra Leone towards the end of the Ebola outbreak that decimated communities in 3 West African countries. I met, interviewed and painted 40 people who had either survived the disease or been involved with containing it.

They ranged from doctors, street sweepers and ambulance drivers to laboratory technicians, nurses and grave diggers.

It was an often brutal and humbling experience that allowed me to paint the portraits of individuals that had endured the unimaginable. The dignity and bravery that these people displayed, is something that I can only hope the portraits that I painted managed to capture. It was this feeling of endurance and ultimately hope that provided the common thread through the 40 portraits, a commentary on the power of humanity in the face of disaster.

I’ve been extremely lucky throughout my career. I’ve been able to paint the things that matter to me and by and large sell them. I made a decision about 10 years ago to move away from landscape painting into the world of portraiture. This didn’t sit too well with the galleries that I was exhibiting with at the time, as they didn’t think that they would be able to sell portraits to their clients. I had a choice to make; either continue on the path that I was already on, or break loose and paint what I really cared about, I chose the latter option. Of course this wasn’t without its risks. Thankfully however, people bought my portraits. I’m not saying that they were jumping off the walls but there was enough interest to generate an income. For me the main satisfaction was that people were buying my portraits, not because they were commissioned pieces or that they knew the sitter but because they liked the paintings in their own right. This really validated my feeling that a good portrait should first and foremost be an interesting painting, with an emotive quality rather than just a painted record of an individual.

MOHAMMED, EBOLA SURVIVOR, SIERRA LEONE

In 2018 I was elected the President of The Royal Institute of Oil Painters. This, as well as my membership of both the Royal Society of Portrait Painters and the New English Art Club, allows me to mix with other painters. It’s the perfect foil for what can often be a solitary existence in the studio. Beyond this though, it enables me to see what’s going on in the world of contemporary figurative painting and to help encourage and bring through the next generation of painters, something that gives me as much pleasure as the production of my own work.

DISCOVER MORE

www.timbenson.co.uk

LUCILLE, TOTTENHAM RESIDENT