Tom Benjamin Contemporary Oil Painter

My Next solo show is at St Annes Gallery Lewes and is open on the 25/26 Feb 3/4 March and Saturday 10th and 17th March. The private view is on Friday 24th Feb. A book with over 50 colour reproductions of my work priced at £15 will be coming out in early Feb. Copies will be available for purchase through St Anne's gallery , Skylark and Lewes Tourist information or directly from me If you would like to arrange studio visit e mail me from my contacts page or call me on 07722519340. If you are interested in viewing or buying a painting you can contact me and arrange a visit to my studio or contact Sarah O' Kane Contemporary Art who have a stock of my work at the gallery and hold regular solo and mixed exhibitions of my paintings. The Caxton Gallery in Whitstable and the Alan Kluckow in Sunningdale also stock my work. Turn to the teaching page for details of courses I am running

Tom deals with the broadest of themes: spaces, light, atmosphere and weather. All the paintings are done on the spot, not cooked up in the studio. Even the largest canvases are carried on a bicycle trailer into the fields and erected in front of the subject, despite wind, rain and cold. Of late, Tom is concentrating more on the sky and to do this he kneels or crouches on the ground, in front of the billowing canvas, in order to make a low horizon and so a greater expanse of sky.

This outdoor approach gives the paintings great freshness and vitality. You almost feel the paint is still wet and the canvas itself running with raindrops, as if it has just been brought in from the downs or the coast. Hope Gap on the coast is one of his inspirational places. Here he concentrates on a few particular rocks, nothing monumental or historic, just simple rocks, sand, sea and sky. Again, you can almost smell the sea and feel the spray.

Raymond Briggs 2006