Karl Benjamin - Mentor

I have been fortunate to have worked with Karl Benjamin from the start of my career - while and undergraduate at Pomona College. He passed away around a year and a half ago, and I and grateful that I was able to visit him beforehand.

He was a gifted artist, mentor, dad, and friend. Many in the region miss him.

Here is a great quote about his work:

“I am an intuitive painter, despite the ordered appearance of my paintings, and am fascinated by the infinite range of expression inherent in color relationships. For the past fifteen or twenty years, I have been working with systems including relatively simple numerical progressions, modular constructions, and random sequences. Images thus formed emerged in very surprising and gratuitous ways, as opposed to being drawn or designed in what had become, for me, on hindsight, a rather self-conscious operation.”—Karl Benjamin

I included this example of his work, since I believe I actually transported this exact piece from Claremont to Francene Seders Gallery in Seattle, while heading home for Christmas break.

The local arts community has honored Karl with this great mural in downtown Pomona (CA).

If you have stumbled upon this site and blog, go to www.karlbenjamin.com to learn more about him. As an "Artist's Artist" and being on the west coast, he may not be an artist that you are familiar with. You now should be!