As a young child I can remember a deep resonance when hiking or camping outdoors with my family. The sights, sounds, smells, and adventure of being amidst the "natural" world was mesmerizing. As a teenager I had dreams of perhaps one day being a mountaineer, a mountain guide, or maybe even running my own backcountry heli ski operation. I felt the same sort of feelings near the ocean as I did when near the mountains. Ah, the dreams of youth...
Art schools teach many different things for many different reasons, but at root, to make art of any form there are certain basic constructs that any artist needs to understand, these being the basics of drawing, line, volume (or mass), perspective, and composition. With that in mind, my early art study covered these basics and I commenced to paint landscapes initially. An end goal, however, was that I knew I also wanted to venture into the world of abstract painting as well. I did this for a good 20 years. Funny how life brings us changes, for in 2010 I relocated to Los Angeles from Northern California. I chose this largely because the art world is much bigger in Los Angeles than in Northern California, and I wanted a taste of a "bigger arena". I moved to Hermosa Beach and suddenly I was seeing the ocean each and every day. Initially I continued painting my abstract paintings, but the lure of the local land and sea began to take root. This "call" back to the land and sea really captivated me. While continuing to work in abstract modes, I also started to dig back into my earlier ideas of what a landscape or seascape painting could be. I began to revisit my earlier interests in artists such as Giorgio Morandi, Richard Diebenkorn, Wolf Kahn, John Walker, Bernard Chaet, and numerous others. With this in mind, the paintings began to flow, and I find great satisfaction in working in both landscape/seascape and abstract modes. A wider selection of the diversity of my work can be seen on my website www.benjunta.com and at www.paintscapcestudio.com