Jason Benjamin

Signed, dated, and titled on reverse: 'Don't you think it's time? (New Paltz NY) 2006, Benjamin'

Ruminating on Jason Benjamin’s landscapes, the art critic John McDonald wrote: “The prevalent mood in Benjamin’s paintings is one of melancholy, or loneliness. We look at a picture postcard view and feel an unexpected twinge of Sehnsucht – to use that untranslatable German word that stands for longing, nostalgia and desire. These are not images of pleasure but of lost pleasures remembered and regretted… Look closely and one can see the painstaking labour that goes into every picture, but Benjamin wants us to engage with the complete image, not just one aspect of its making. The labour and the loneliness do not detract from our pleasure in these paintings, they add both depth and nuance.”

'Don’t you think it’s time' transports the viewer to the upstate New York, where the field of daintily tremulant wild flowers are protected by the fiercely impenetrable band of trees. The low view point allows the cloudscape to dwarf and dominate the viewer with the pathos of its dramatic immensity, conveying the breadth of the American terrain which equally impressed Jason’s nineteenth-century predecessors of the Hudson River School, including Thomas Cole, Frederic Church, and Albert Bierstadt. As observed by McDonald, the immediacy of sensation is tempered by the deliberate choice of a subdued colour palette, reminiscent of fading memories rather than of the immediacy of experience.

The Melbourne-born Jason Benjamin (1971-2021), a graduate of the Pratt Institute in New York, had held numerous solo exhibitions from the early 1990s onwards, in Australia (in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Perth, and Adelaide) as well as abroad (in Dallas TX, London, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Rome, Beijing, Berlin).

A monograph on the artist’s works, ‘What Binds Us’, with an essay by Ken McGregor, was published by Macmillan in 2007. A survey exhibition of the artist’s works, ‘Everyone is here’, curated by Gavin Wilson, was held at Wagga Wagga Art Gallery, touring nationally 2013-2014.

Benjamin’s paintings were included in curated group exhibitions, including ‘Ten Australian Artists’ at the Australian High Commission in Singapore (2000); ‘William Creek and Beyond’ (Ballarat Fine Art Gallery, and touring nationally 2003-2004); as well as in art fair presentations, most notably with Rebecca Hossack Gallery at Art London (2001, 2002) and Art Miami (2003).

The artist’s works had been selected as finalists in numerous prestigious art awards and prizes including, most notably, the Archibald Prize (the winner, Packing Room Prize, 2005), Wynne Prize, the Doug Moran Portrait Prize, and the Mosman Art Prize.

Benjamin’s works reside in the collections of the National Gallery of Australia; National Gallery of Victoria, Artbank, the Parliament House Art Collection, National Portrait Gallery, regional galleries in Bendigo, Ballarat, Shepparton, Mornington Peninsula, Castlemaine, Goulburn, Rockhampton, Tweed River, ArtSpace Makay, and HOTA.