Hospital Rooms,Bethlem Mother and baby Unit, London, 2021
In June 2021 Ben led a sensory flower painting workshop with service users and staff at the MBU. Taking place ‘en plain air’ (in the open air), the group walked through Bethlem’s sensory garden, paying close attention to the scents and colours and creating a series of paintings inspired by the flowers and plants they found in the garden. This workshop and the flowers in Bethlem’s sensory garden closely inspired Ben’s beautiful paintings, transitioning through the seasons from wall to wall.’
Ben’s wonderful artwork, A Blue Between Two Greens, is a group of wall paintings which Ben developed for the dining room in the Cove Ward at Redruth Community Hospital.
Evolved from paper-making workshops that Ben ran on the ward and at The Tate St. Ives, where the leftover paper was repurposed to create new, colourful sheets. Giving life to new paintings, these artworks created elicit memories and emotions, captivating fragments of conversations shared by Ben and the patients throughout the last year. Stemming from a moment with one patient in particular in the ward’s garden, her light green top and olive trousers on the green floor beneath made her trousers appear temporarily blue. After a few light-hearted jokes, this simple, humorous moment and conversation sparked the idea for an artwork that shifted through colour spectrums.
As one of the final artists to complete their installation, Ben was able to use the paint that remained from the other now completed artworks. Much like the reuse of Ben’s old paintings to make new artworks in the studio, these leftover colours became the starting point for his final three paintings adorning the Cove ward’s dining room.
