Ben Payne

Ben has been painting professionally for over twenty years. Before that, he worked as a Behavioural Therapist, in the field of Autism, and loved the work, but knew he had to paint.

He is largely self-taught, although his late mother was a skilled artist and she taught him a lot about observation and draftsmanship. The first work Ben ever approached galleries with was inspired by the British coastline. He was always drawn to the sea and while he has enjoyed the different challenge of landscape painting, standing on a beach, under a far-reaching sky is the ultimate escapism , and so his paintings naturally developed from there. He paints with imagined realism, looking for the escapist ideal in every scene.

In being self-taught, Ben previously challenged himself to produce a thousand small studies, over a number of years, to improve his technique. These small study pieces not only taught him valuable skills, but were sold to collectors all around the globe, and at the last count, these studies have been sent to buyers in 22 different countries worldwide. Ben describes this as an incredibly humbling statistic, but it was very much the key to his continued success as a painter.

He currently works from his studio near the south coast, when he's not travelling the length and breadth of the UK (and beyond) for fresh inspiration.