Tom Benjamin - The Nowness of Everything

The Nowness of Everything
The title comes from Dennis Potter’s last interview, which he did with Melvyn Bragg on The South Bank Show in 1994. When I heard it, I felt that it encapsulated what I am trying to achieve in my paintings. 
"At this season, the blossom is out in full now, there in the west, early. It's a plum tree. It looks like apple blossom, but it's white. And looking at it, instead of saying 'Oh, that's nice blossom,' last week, when I was looking at it through the window while writing, I saw that it was the whitest, frothiest, blossomiest blossom that there ever could be. And I can see it. Things are both more trivial than they ever were, and more important than they ever were, and the difference between the trivial and the important doesn't seem to matter. But the nowness of everything is absolutely wondrous. If people could see that... there's no way of telling you; you have to experience it. But the glory of it, if you like, the comfort of it, the reassurance... not that I’m interested in reassuring people—bugger that. The fact is, if you see the present tense, boy, do you see it! And boy, can you celebrate it."
The quote above perfectly sums up what I am trying to capture in my paintings. All of my work is done outside, in front of the subject. Whatever I am painting, my focus is always on how light reveals forms in relation to one another at a specific moment. It’s in the particular quality of each moment that the poetry and beauty reside. Every decision I make—from composition and drawing to the use of colour and texture—is aimed at conveying the poetry of that moment as clearly as possible.
I am often drawn to subjects where this interplay of light and time is especially apparent. This makes painting an intense, fast process, as I’m racing to capture as much as possible before the light changes. If the painting isn’t finished by the end of the session, I take it out again under as similar conditions as possible.
This exhibition reflects some of my enduring subject themes including coastal landscapes of Cornwall and Pembrokeshire, Trees and the villages and landscapes of rural France.
Tom was born in 1967 and brought up in Lewes East Sussex where he still lives with his wife Sarah. His father was the artist Gerald Benjamin, and his stepfather was the author and illustrator Raymond Briggs. He studied at Norwich school of Art. He was elected to membership of the New English Art Club (NEAC) in 2021.