Christopher Benson

Christopher Benson1960年生于美国罗德岛州普罗维登斯，1983年毕业于著名的罗德岛设计学院绘画系。

Christopher Benson的绘画主题通常是安静的街道，空置的停车场，郊区家庭生活的宁静以及自然风光。我们习惯用希区柯克的框架观看爱德华·霍珀，孤寂与隐晦的征兆似乎一触即发，而本森的绘画只有日常的横截面，或者只是空间一隅，但却宽阔澄明，恰如其分；具象与抽象的巧妙结合也让作品的视觉效果左右逢源。

本森早期的风格更接近照片写实主义，但越晚近越简洁，画面没有沉闷的说教，也没有繁琐的叙事，似乎只有蒙德里安式的明净色块在低语。但正是这种干净简洁，让我们重新认识并感知我们日常的生活空间。

After many years of thinking about what it is that I am trying to do, and writing many statements about this or that aspect of my “process”, I have lately concluded that I am nothing more or less than a painter of pictures. I have been in love with the material of oil paint, and with what it can do on the surface of its ground, ever since I first picked up a brush at age ten. I also love pictures, especially the sort that look unremarkable at first, or else merely familiar, only to reveal all sorts of surprises and contradictions over a longer acquaintance.

Is this art? It certainly is to me, but in all honesty, I can't claim to know what that word means in the broader cultural sense. I do know that a kind of artistry has gradually evolved in my hand and eye. Beyond the problem of always trying to improve that ability and to continue to find interesting subjects to bend it to, the grand philosophical questions about what it all means to society as a whole grow increasingly irrelevant to me. I just want to make the best pictures I can. When I’m gone, I hope they will remain accessible to anybody who takes the time to look at one. Whatever qualities they may hold, or lack, should be personally determined then and there, by each viewer, one at a time.

— Christopher Benson , Santa Fe, 2016

经过多年的思考与实践，并写下诸多作画过程的宣言后，我最近总结出自己只是一个图像绘画者。当我十岁第一次拿起画笔时，我就热爱着颜料和它所能施展之处。我也热爱图像，尤其是令我不熟悉的但在长期熟络后又充满惊喜和矛盾的那些。

这是艺术吗？这对我来说确是艺术，但完全坦白地说，我不能说在更广义的文化语境中懂得那个词汇的真正含义。我确知一种艺术性在我手中和眼中逐渐演变。除了不断提高绘画能力和继续探寻适合的物像外，绘画对于社会层面更加广大的哲学含义与我渐行渐远。我只想画我所能画的图像。当我不在了，我希望这些图像仍能被人们看到。无论作品的品质如何，丰富还是匮乏，应该由每一个观看的个体来决定。