BENEDICT RAMOS

ART JERICHO 6 King St Oxford OX2 6DF

12 FEBRUARY - 15 MARCH 2015

Benedict Ramos has stepped away from a background of publishing to a life as a working artist. It is in his genes, and will out. His grandfather, Sir Henry Rushbury, was both landscape painter and etcher, and for many years Keeper at the Royal Academy Schools; his father, Theodore Ramos, a well-established portrait painter. Third generation, Ramos is drawn to the beauty of the natural world like a moth.

His chosen medium is digital photography. “I have worked almost exclusively digitally for the past few years. The works are captured in one shot, and are not elaborately manipulated. I have learned to love digital printing, and I print everything myself using archival pigment inks and cotton rag, or more traditional photographic baryta papers. It is extraordinary to see how the choice of paper can transform the feel of a print.”

Ramos conveys a fascination and love of natural form and transformation through close and sustained observation. His purpose is ‘revealing beauty’ - as Blake said, “To see a World in a Grain of Sand / And a Heaven in a Wild Flower”. Choosing subjects that are regarded as beauty personified, his challenge is, as artist, to capture and retain the attention of the viewer. Ramos does this well. There is an element of the still life in his portraits of flowers that draws on Dutch and Spanish Old Masters – an exquisite rendering of colour and tone. In his portraits of trees, Ramos explores the abstract form and patterning of his subjects whilst retaining their poetic power.