Biography
Benjamin Hunt was born in Boise, Idaho in 1996 and is a Cornish College of the Arts BFA Graduate. He is an artist that uses healing, predictions, resolutions, and meditation as a vision of field. His paintings are reflections of time and moods inside of evolving environments. Representations of visual texture and patterns emotionally convey graphic structures of fauna throughout his work. He has shown In the International Contemporary Art fair in Kirchberg, Luxembourg, The Van Gogh Art Gallery in Madrid, Spain and Bellevue Arts Museum in Bellevue, Washington.
Artist Statement
I always felt like who I am is a secret trick up my sleeve, experiencing a hidden othering that alienates a universal acceptance. I express my identity as a Ukrainian American Artist by drawing and painting personal patterns that change the reality of my existence. I never felt like America meant anything to me but I never knew of my Russian Heritage. I contemplate ideas of my culture through poetry. My work links death and orientation together using the details of frame composition through textiles, collage, paint, poetry and drawing. My work is a spiritual exploration of trying on different outfits to better understand who I am becoming.
My paintings look to unify a god face in the drawn image. The God face is an idea of choices people make when confronted with things beyond the living. The Memento Mori and Ikebana are historical contextualization of my practice through different paintings and wallhangings. The Memento Mori is an object serving as salvation and warning about the afterlife. Ikebana is an arrangement of flowers used as offerings to altars. They both symbolize events and characters that underline metaphysical practices in recent times.
The wolf in my work represents the mirage of culture and heritage that is undergoing transformation of an alternative journey. The Symbolism of the Wolf has alway resonated personally with me and the opposing aspects told through fairy tales. In Mesoamerica a common belief is that a dog carries the newly deceased across a body of water to the afterlife. In Japan they believe that Wolves are Prophetic and that they used to be human. If a traveler does not return home a wolf will come to your house and howl signaling their death. My work deconstructs the apparatus of the “unseen” to the “in plain sight” by transfiguring poetry, fabric, drawing, painting and collage. Unraveling the contemporary myth of the past irrelevant to modern platforms.
My paintings look to unify a god face in the drawn image. The God face is an idea of choices people make when confronted with things beyond the living. The Memento Mori and Ikebana are historical contextualization of my practice through different paintings and wallhangings. The Memento Mori is an object serving as salvation and warning about the afterlife. Ikebana is an arrangement of flowers used as offerings to altars. They both symbolize events and characters that underline metaphysical practices in recent times.
The wolf in my work represents the mirage of culture and heritage that is undergoing transformation of an alternative journey. The Symbolism of the Wolf has alway resonated personally with me and the opposing aspects told through fairy tales. In Mesoamerica a common belief is that a dog carries the newly deceased across a body of water to the afterlife. In Japan they believe that Wolves are Prophetic and that they used to be human. If a traveler does not return home a wolf will come to your house and howl signaling their death. My work deconstructs the apparatus of the “unseen” to the “in plain sight” by transfiguring poetry, fabric, drawing, painting and collage. Unraveling the contemporary myth of the past irrelevant to modern platforms.
CV
2020
Collective Art Show, Van Gogh Gallery, Madrid Spain
International Contemporary Art Fair, Lux Expo, Kirchberg, Luxembourg
MASK PARADE, MoM, Seattle, WA
Blooming Hearts, Jump, Boise, ID
2019
While Supplies Last Bellevue Art Museum, Seattle, WA
Screen Printing Party, Party Hat Gallery, Seattle, WA
Forever Again, Specialist Gallery, Seattle WA
Double Fantasy, Cornish Collage of the Arts BFA Graduate
2018
Mood Flowers, Studio e, Curated by Anthony White, Seattle WA
Cloud of Smoke, Studio Current, Seattle WA
While Supplies Last, Mount Analogue, Seattle WA
Through Multiple Vessels, Cornish College of the Arts, L Space, Seattle WA
2017
Incidental Eraser, Cornish College of the Arts, Seattle WA
2015
Solo Exhibition, The Crux, Boise ID
2014
Student Showcase, Art Source Gallery, Boise ID
Awards
Cornish Collage of the Arts, Art Merit Scholarship, 2015
Artist of the Year, Timberline High School, 2014
Scholastic Arts and Writing, Silver Medal, 2014
Publications
Valley Visions, 2013/14/15
Programs
Summer at Cornish, Art Intensive, 2014, Seattle WA
Everything is Beautiful if you let it be Beautiful, is an expression of my self identities through paint, fabric, and collage. My “Soft Paintings” are a way to escape the conventions of a painting by changing the underlying meanings of the word frame, wallhanging, finalization, and craft. The Paintings are presentations of Spiritual Messages created through, sacred still lifes, wolves, textiles, fake flowers, abstraction, and form. They allow for the bigger questions of beauty by exploring the eternal, death, passion, and reciprocation of life. They carry, display, compliment arrangements of color, form, composition in a consecutive storyline through different mediums and vessels. “Beauty in the eyes of the beholder,” Margret Wolfe Hungerford, things are as beautiful as the viewer perceives them to be. By exploring the ideas of “Soft” and “beauty” the viewer can find what is beautiful for their own personal reasons.
Compositionally, my work is very intricate in sentiment and symbolism, often relying on the imagery, philosophies, and principles of Astrology, Tarot, and Shamanism to come to terms of what is happening in relative memory and present motion. My environment is also shaped by feminism, universal human rights, transculturation, the painful impact of colonialism on indigenous cultures, and the replacement of traditional beliefs. It is important what material I represent and use within an artwork because all aspects deliberately suggest a larger connotation or conversation that relates back to human knowledge of society.
