| Benji Alexander Palus is a painter of closeness; intimacy. For him, painting is an act of affection, an expression of love and admiration. He doesn't take commissions. He doesn't paint crowd scenes, still life, strangers, or landscapes. Palus is a figurative artist, working with just a handful of close friends who act as his muses. Says the artist,
It's difficult to convey the importance of my friendships with these few women who inspire me to paint. They are my art. They inspire me with the very fabric of who they are, down to their core - the way they love and live their lives, raise their families, overcome hardship and tragedy. There is a lot of romance in our friendships, but in a platonic sense - the romance of dancing in the rain, sharing a bottle of wine on an old bridge over a canal in Venice in the middle of the night, watching the setting sun in lonely desert hills, or drinking wine with cheese until the sun rises, and always just the two of us. No one else is there to dilute the intensity of the meaning we find in each others' existence in that place and time. And then, they go back to their busy lives, and I go into the studio where they basically become my life. As we all get older it gets harder to spend time together but when we do, something just clicks. We talk and laugh and often cry. The camera comes out (I use my photographs as painting references) and magic happens. Each experience, each moment with them means so much to me that I don't know how to express it except through painting, which is my most important reason for being. I used to wonder whether they mean so much to me because of my need to paint them or if I need to paint them because they mean so much to me, but really it's all one and the same. Painting has become such a personal endeavor for me that I can't imagine doing it any other way or for any other reason.
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