Industrial Collage
I work with materials I feel some connection to. I grew to love the “hand-me-downs” received as a kid, and now, be it clothes and furniture for myself and studio, or canvas, tree bark or scrap wood for my art, I like old, rough, time-worn objects. The idea is to construct “canvases” in which the placement of these objects in relation to each other creates not only a dynamic composition, but an intriguing dialog. They have stories to tell. And if I’ve done my job well, you can read them as I do—at an arm’s length from the canvas—and piece together their puzzle for yourself.
“According to one critic, my works looked like scraped billboards. I went to look at the billboards and decided that more billboards should be scraped.” —Mark Tobey
About Ben
I started drawing and painting in earnest during high school. I used to copy my album covers or photos from Rolling Stone magazine. My first subjects were, literally, Elvis Costello, Bob Marley, and Andy Warhol. I went to Skidmore College, majored in Art, and fell in love with the Abstract Expressionists – Pollock, Johns, de Kooning, Kline, Rauschenberg. I live with my family in Somerville, and paint in a small third-floor studio in our house.
Ben Kauffman: Artist 