Benson Art Studio-AboutArtist

"I grew up drawing . . . everything ---people, figures, landscapes, monsters and flowers. My sensibilities in painting have been defined by a continuing respect and admiration for those before me who have wielded the great representational brush. Believing also that there is as much power and emotion in abstraction I am attempting to reconcile the two in my work, whether in landscapes or with the figure or still life."

After William Benson received a BFA from the Cornell Fine Arts Department, he began a dual career in art ---painting for himself (along with showing whenever he could) and producing exquisite portraits which had the benefit of earning him enough to support his family.

On the East Coast, he has garnered attention for his work as a figurative painter showing regionally as well as in New York City. He is currently represented by the Dyansen Gallery of Boston, MA in landscapes, still lifes and figures; as well as, Portraits, Inc. in New York City; Portrait Consultants in White Plains, New York; and Portraits South in Raleigh and The Portrait Source in Hendersonville, both of North Carolina.

Within the past five years, he has been applying himself to a subject that has always intrigued him but needed the special distinction it deserved, the local landscape in upstate New York where he lives. The images represented here show a unique understanding of the interplay between the natural happenstance of abstraction and the gifted control of fine painting which lends his pictures a sense of time and shared experience, and yet, they ultimately retain their truth to the region ---a virtual tour de force of the coupling of keen observation with his individual, emotional response.