Ben Georgia
A Life’s Journey through Art:
Ben Georgia remembers vividly as an 8 year old his unexpected reaction and excitement at the power of art when he saw Charles Demuth’s painting “I saw the Figure 5 in Gold”, a rendition of a red firetruck, on his first visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC. Ben drew and painted as a child and made his very own first art studio in a disused attic room overlooking the Hudson River as a teenager.
Immediately after high school Ben enlisted in the Marine Corps and while in the Service, the Marines eventually discovered and utilized his art skills in the Education Department. Subsequently, Ben pursued a BA in History at Rutgers thinking to become an attorney but he realized that his real calling in life was to be an artist. He studied painting at Columbia, NYU and the Arts Students’ League of NY and was a student of Theodore Stamos, who was one of the leading NY Abstract Expressionists and friend of Rothko.
Ben became a full time abstract painter in the 1980s and has had a career with innumerable shows in galleries and museums, most proud perhaps of the one at his old alma mater, Rutgers. Ben has had 6 solo shows at Andre Zarre Gallery, Chelsea, NYC and worked with the Art Cabinet, Nantucket since the 90s.
Ben Georgia’s passion for painting and love of abstraction has led him to explore and develop his expressive and dynamic use of color and form to reach out to the viewer viscerally, emotionally:
“I work to create something on the canvas which is not of this external world, rather an imaginary vision which I see from the start on the blank, white canvas and where the energy, beauty & strength of the painting work to compensate for and counteract the tragedy and decay of life”.
Ben Georgia is a proponent of what the art critic, Robert Hughes calls “Slow art, art that holds time as a vase holds water. Art that grows out of the modes of perception and making, whose skill and doggedness makes you think and feel. Art that isn’t mere sensational, that doesn’t get its mage across in 10 seconds, that Isn’t falsely iconic, that hooks onto something deep in our natures, in a word, art that is the very opposite of mass media”.
