An excerpt from the interview.
Julie Karabenick: In #6, 1989, the forms feel increasingly liberated from the grid.
Karl Benjamin: I was standing before a large square canvas holding a piece of charcoal and suddenly the whole room seemed to come apart as a large earthquake struck. The next day, I went back to the canvas and began making these slanting lines radiating out from the center—something very different for me.
...When you’re painting, the only thing you’re really aiming for is to realize that painting. I think all of us are confronted with the problem of feeling whole. Look around you—how many people feel really whole? It’s a rare thing. When you make a painting, you’re so closely identified with it that it is you, and when it’s done and it feels whole, then you feel whole as well. Otherwise, why would artists spend their entire lives painting? [read more]
Above, portrait of artist Karl Benjamin.
