Tom Benjamin was born in Totnes in Devon but spent most of his childhood in Plumpton in  Sussex  The landscape of the area as well as the nearby coast and Brighton is the chief subject of Toms paintings.

Toms father the landscape and portrait painter Gerald Benjamin died in 1979 but was and remains an important influence and inspiration to him.

In 1986 he went to Norwich School of art and was encouraged to work outside in front of the landscape by a tutor at the college the landscape painter Graham Giles.

Tom lives in Lewes with his partner Sarah and their three children. He is perhaps unusual in that most if work is carryed out in front of the subject. The paintings vary in size from 8 inches across to 5 feet and are worked on in front orfthe subject through out the year in all weathers.

Much of the art I admire  has a quality of seeming true to the way the world looks and yet seeing it in that moment as if seeing for the first time without preconceptions. It is this sense that sometimes an unexpected quality of light, viewpoint or atmosphere can catch you with your guard down and make you lose yourself in the intensity of a moment that draws me to paint. I prefer to paint in front of the subject. When working in front of a landscape every thing is in flux. The light and the weather are changing. Each brush mark has to work in colour tone and drawing. The fluidity of oil paint can stand as an equivalent for the shifting of light and of the changing nature of my response to the subject through the act of painting. I think that I am drawn to paint by a sense that I must make something that lasts from the experience of a moment.