Collection: Ben Winter

I was born in Bournemouth in 1971. After attending a foundation course at Bournemouth & Poole College of Art & Design, I went on to Central & St. Martins College of Art in London achieving my BA (hons) in Fine Art Painting in 1993. Whilst painting and exhibiting continually since, I returned to Bournemouth where I qualified as a conservation quality picture framer.

Creating work in a wide variety of media; charcoal, pastels, oils and watercolours, I paint still lifes, landscapes, portraits and, more recently abstract pieces. Whatever the subject matter, and the medium of execution, I am preoccupied with light, colour and composition and the way that these elements can create mood, form and visual interest. For this reason acrylics, with their quick drying times have become the medium in which most of my work is now executed. They allow a reaction to a subject to be recorded with an immediacy that neither oils or watercolours, by their natures, can facilitate.

'I regard myself as a traditionalist, believing that, 'learning to see' and drawing are the necessary foundations from which work of quality, however diverse, ( representative through to abstract ), can evolve.'