Benjamin Senior (b. 1982, Southampton, UK)
Frisbee
2020
egg tempera on cotton on plywood
60x50cm
Great Titchfield St
Red Shop
2020
egg tempera on panel
50x50cm
November
2020
egg tempera on cotton on plywood
60x50cm
Ukelist
2019
egg tempera on cotton on plywood
30x40cm
Stone Carvers
2019
egg tempera on cotton on plywood
Roll
2019
Egg tempera on cotton on plywood
60x80cm
The Puppeteer
2019
egg tempera on cotton on plywood
50x60cm
Gulls over South Bay
2019
egg tempera on cotton on plywood
70x100cm
Summersend
Egg tempera on cotton on plywood, 60 x 50cm
2018
Alternating Stroke
Egg tempera on cotton on plywood, 50 x 100cm
2018
The Pier (Run)
Oil on linen, 150 x 120cm
2016
Goldfinches
Oil on linen, 40 x 26 inches
2016
Hounds
Egg tempera on cotton on plywood, 50 x 80cm
2016
Chessplayers
Egg tempera on cotton on plywood, 80 x 120cm
2018
Lanterns
Oil on linen, 120 x 80cm
2015
The Hound
Oil on linen, 80 x 120cm
2015
The Grey Studio
Oil on linen, 150 x 75cm
2014
Portals
Oil on linen, 100 x 80cm
2016
Cartwheels
Oil on linen, 100 x 150cm
2014
Beacon Hill
Oil on linen, 100cm x 150cm
2014
Westerly
Oil on linen, 51 x 76cm
2014
Commuters
Oil on linen, 66 x 86cm
2014
Rings VII (Light and Distance)
Egg tempera on cotton on plywood, 60 x 50cm
2014
Ball Games IV
Oil and egg tempera on linen, 50 x 75cm
2013
Ball Games III
Oil and egg tempera on linen, 70 x 100cm
2013
Sunbathers
Egg tempera on cotton on aluminium, 40 x 60cm
2013
Healing Fields (large)
Egg tempera on cotton on plywood, 50 x 75cm
2013
While Senior is a painter of contemporary life, he takes inspiration from earlier painters such as Poussin and Seurat. Groupings of figures are carefully choreographed. It is an ensemble cast – no single figure dominates, rather each figure contributes to the whole rhythm of the scene. Individual bodies are visually connected to form a larger organism. The checks, stripes, spots and diamonds of the architecture and clothing act as harmonic components inside the composition establishing a dialogue with the figures.
The history of realist painting has always carried the hidden pleasures of composition; while abstract art thought to do away with the image in the name of “pure” form. But Senior lets abstraction’s ideal of flat design clash with the illusion of depth, each contradicting the other, both tangled in a strange embrace. Somewhere in Senior’s paintings is the question of who, in a painting, the human figure addresses, of whether that figure is a subject or an object, of who is looked at and who does the looking. A question about the nature of this peculiar screen we call a painting, and the world we see upon it.
JJ Charlesworth, Art Review, October 2015
Benjamin Senior was born in 1982 and he lives in London, where he received MA in painting from the Royal College of Art in 2010. He held solos exhibitions at Bolte Lang, Zurich; James Fuentes in New York; Studio Voltaire in London and at Grey Noisein Dubai. Residencies and awards include: Kingsgate Workshops Trust Residency 2011 – 2012 and the Gordon Luton Prize for Painting, 2010.
