| Profile: Benjamin Cohen - Artist |
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I am 21 years old....live in South East London
I am Fine Art student, just about to start my 3rd year, at Loughborough University.... I studied at Chelsea College of Art and Design for my foundation year.... I really started painting properly when i began my BA at Loughborough, although i did paint at Chelsea....  I guess i have always been interested in figuartive art. When i was a boy i was blown over by the Renainssance and Baroque periods, form Titian, El Greco, Brueghel and Mantegna to Rembrandt, Rubens and Caravaggio etc. I always return to the masters for inspiration.... 21st Century artists such as Freud, Jenny Saville, Euan Uglow, Eric Fischl, Francis Bacon and Tai-Shan Schierenberg have had a huge input into my progression.... Literature also has an influence on my work...e.g T.S. Eliot's 'The Waste Land' and Philip Larkin's 'The Whitsun Weddings'.... I maily work from photographs, not from life, simply because as a student it is more convenient...i hope to work from life in the future... I wouldnt say my work has a particular style, it holds a definate methodology behind it, a painterly aesthetic...but not a style...  I am not interested in creating work which 'looks' like the person i am painting, i want my work to hold the essence of the sitter, to coment and suggest on the way they are as a person, the way they move, talk and happen to be....This is one of the reasons why i wouldnt want to produce a painting that 'looks' like a photograph... My aim as an artist is to produce work which carrys the sitters character across without using the conventional modes of painting to do so...something which i am in no way close to achieving yet, something which i believe Francis Bacon has managed to attain more successfully than any other artist... The figure dominates my practice because i am fascinated with the brutality of man towards one another ( this is prodominantly based around past experience)... people continuosly change and alter, no one ever looks the same as they did a moment ago which leaves the possibilty to address these concerns in painting endless...a problem which inevitably i will always be chasing....  I definatly want to continue my practice by doing an MA in London...i feel i have spent enough time away from the city to come back with a clear head and really challenge my practice.. My work is becoming more and more competent and the only way to fully seize the moment is to continue my practice under a full-time course.... I would like to become a University Fine Art Lecturer in the future as, this way, i can still continue to paint and also teach a subject which i am so indulged in..... Click here to view more of my work Benjamin Cohen Share this Article:                        Advertisement |
