Interview with artist Ben Marchant
“I have a distinct memory from when I was at primary school of being allowed to stay out of assembly rather than stop the drawing I was doing,” says artist Ben Marchant, recalling how his lifelong love of art was fostered early. Ben grew up in Rusthall and went to primary school in the village. “I remember St Paul’s as a really nurturing school where art was encouraged. My very first teacher, Melanie, lives in Australia now. She has pictures I did for her when I was five or six. I have really happy memories of my time there.”
Ben with his paintings of Amy Winehouse, Winston Churchill, Marlon Brando and Titanic.
I met Ben to talk about his forthcoming exhibition at the Arty Farty Retreat in Southborough, and I ask him about his painting style. “I work in acrylic in a mosaic style that I have developed over the last eighteen months, where the picture builds from tiny squares to create an almost pixelated effect.” His paintings are often re-imagined portraits that juxtapose elements of the expected with the unexpected to create something new. “In one painting I thought I would take an image like the Mona Lisa and combine it with another face,” he says. “Some of my inspiration also comes from what if? questions. What if the Titanic had arrived in New York? What if Diana hadn’t died?”
After primary school Ben continued to be enthusiastic about art. “My A-level Art course at St Gregory’s in Tunbridge Wells was great. It was a small group, and the teacher was really cool. After that I did a foundation course in Art in Maidstone, and I also went to college in Worthing and specialised in animation for film and tv.” After college Ben worked abroad at summer camps and Camp America. “I found I tended to be given kids to do art classes with, and when I was in Romania, I found that art was a way of bridging the language barrier with the children I was working with.”
Returning to the UK and building his career in social services, Ben veered away from being creative. “I got back into painting about eighteen months ago after a friend persuaded me to start an Instagram account. Wanting to have new content to post kept me accountable to paint. Having a child now, my time is quite limited. Art is what I enjoy. It is therapeutic,” says Ben. He has already had some commissions, and paints pets as well as people.
Having grown up in the village, Ben finds that he appreciates it more than ever now he has a family. “Rusthall is a really great mix of different types of people, I appreciate it more and more as I get older. It is big enough to have everything you need, but small enough to have a village feel.
Ben’s exhibition ran at the Arty Farty Retreat at 126 London Road in Southborough until Friday 24th September 2021. You can follow Ben on Instagram at @bmarchant2019
