Christopher Benson

Thinking of the Island

(2024) oil/linen 24” x 20”

Taoist Wave

(2023) oil/panel 24” x 24” SOLD

False Flag

(2023) oil/Dorland’s wax/linen 48” x 36”

Constructed Abstraction #6

(2006) 12" x 16" x 3” oil/constructed wood panels

The Falcon, Sketch 2

(2023) oil on panel, 6” x 6”

A Fast Sky

(2023) oil on panel, 6” x 6”

Half Moon Bay Surf

(2022) oil/linen 24” x 36”

Red House #1

(2023) oil on panel 8” x 8” SOLD

Impact Zone

(2022) oil/linen 32” x 58” (framed 34” x 60”)

A Cloud for Flo

Oil/linen 20" x 16" SOLD

Red White and Blue Collage #7

(2021) oil on linen samples on panel, 11” x 14”

With painted wooden tray frame: 17 5/8” x 20 5/8” x 2”

Knuckle Sandwich

(2021) oil on linen, 48” x 36”

With painted floater frame: 50.25” x 38.25” x 2”

Red White and Blue Collage #3

(2021) oil on linen samples on panel, 11” x 14”

With painted wooden tray frame: 17 5/8” x 20 5/8” x 2”

Tin Mine

(2021) collaged oil on linen pieces on panel, 16” x 12”

With painted floater frame: 18.25” x 14.25” x 2”

Green Border

(2021) oil on linen pieced on panel, 8” x 8” SOLD

With painted wooden tray frame: 14 5/8” x 2.5”

Red White and Blue Collage #8

(2021) oil on linen samples on panel, 8” x 8” SOLD

With painted wooden tray frame: 14 5/8” x 2.5”

Red White and Blue Collage #4

(2021) oil on linen pieced on panel, 12” x 12”

With painted wooden tray frame: 14 5/8” x 2.5”

The Strand

(2022) oil on panel-framed, 12 x 16“ SOLD

Cloud River

(2022) oil on linen-framed, 11 x 14”

Layer Cake

(2022) oil on panel, 6 by 6”

Wave Doorway

(2022) oil on panel, 6” by 6” SOLD

Gateway

(2022) oil on panel, 6 by 6”

Horizon

(2022) oil on panel, 6 by 6”

Empty Sea

(2021) 16 x 20” SOLD

Gate with Tree

(2021) 6 x 6”

Red Gate Number 2

(2021) 14 x 11”

Red Gate Number 1

(2021) 8 x 8”

Somewhere in a Storm

(2021) 8” x 8” oil/wood panel

Imaginary Streetscape

oil/linen 14” x 16”

Half Moon

(2019) Oil on Panel, 8x8” SOLD

Green Coast

oil/panel 6” x 6”

Waterspout

oil/panel 6” x 6” SOLD

Small Square Wave

2019, oil on panel, 8 by 8 inches, framed size – 14.75” x 14.75" SOLD

Back in the Bullring

2012, oil on panel, 30” x 30” SOLD

Landscape Through a Red Frame

20” x 20”, Monotype in colored ink on rag paper SOLD

Angled Road

12.5” x 12.5”, Charcoal on Gessoed Bristol board SOLD

Landscape for Morty

16” x 10”, (with frame 22” x 18”), Oil on Gessoed Panel SOLD

Landscape through a Red Frame

10.5” x 10.5”, (with frame 17.5” x 17.5”), Oil Stick on Linen SOLD

Tricolor

11” x 14” (with frame 17” x 20”), Oil on Linen, Mounted on Panel SOLD

Window with Red Curtains and Green Field

5” x 7”, (with frame 9” x 11”), Oil on Gessoed Panel SOLD

Little Compton Field

Oil on Linen 20" x 22" SOLD

Roswell #8

2014, oil on linen, 24”x36” – framed in off-white platform floater

AUTO AID (Roswell #4)

2013, oil on linen, 48”x72” – framed in off-white platform floater

Brenton Point Surf

2017, oil on linen, 18”x24” – framed in plain white floater SOLD

Smokey Sou'wester

oil/linen 12" X 22" SOLD

About the Artist

Christopher Benson was born in Providence, Rhode Island in 1960 and grew up in nearby Newport. From 1975 to 1979 he attended the Woodstock Country School in South Woodstock, Vermont where he met his first and most formative painting teacher and mentor, Peter Devine. He is a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design and a two-time winner of the Pollock-Krasner Painting Fellowship.

Benson’s work – which traverses a variety of idioms, from landscape, seascape, architectural and figurative genre scenes, to both expressionistic and formalist abstraction – all descends from a long line of Modern European and American painters with an affinity for gestural brushwork and bright, often luminous color. While there are a great many other painters who have inspired his work, Benson feels a particular kinship to George Bellows’ early twentieth century urban realism and to the expressionistic paint-handling of Willem deKooning and Richard Diebenkorn.

Benson has exhibited his oil paintings, both his realism and abstractions, in galleries and museums throughout the United States – especially in New England, in the San Francisco Bay Area, and the southwestern states of Texas, Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona. In the summer of 2022, he had a two-person show at the North Dakota Museum of Art with the Rhode Island painter Sue McNally, and another two person show in October of 2023 at the Museum of the Southwest in Midland, Texas.