I was led to becoming an artist through a spiritual quest that began when I was a child and crystallized in the mid to late nineteen nineties. I never consciously intended to paint. I have always been intensely fascinated by the innermost workings of the universe, both physical and spiritual finding similarities between the vastness of the ever expanding cosmos and freedom of mind. Strange as it seems, I feel like my spirit is in a constant state of creative meditation, free to roam through many other planes and dimensions. My paintings are proofs and accounts of my travels and spiritual reflections. I paint from inner visions and intense emotions, impossible to organize in words, which I let go of instead on canvas. I seem to follow an inner guide, a wisdom or an internal muse that supplies me with tremendous joy and a wonderful feeling of long forgotten peace.

My work is an extension and a clarification of my strongest, clearest and most intimate thinking. I am convinced that what I manifest in physical form as an artist is but a dim reflection of what my spirit is capable of creating. I believe we are only here to create the good and free each other. I trust that we also all play a bigger rather than smaller role in the "great scheme" of life. I see myself as a mystic and understand art as the channeling of a creative realm I now begin to allow. I see the physical realm as a means of communication for higher consciousness and the benefit of all. I am deeply grateful to artists who have exposed their thoughts on life and art. My late mother, Arlette Oger, was a true artist and an art teacher in France. She shared her process with me and will always remain a soaring example. She influenced me greatly.

My work is for the most part expressive: abstract and abstract expressionist with an intense and free use of color and various media to produce unusual textures, shapes, compositions and color coordinations. I too believe color has a primitive healing effect provided it contains and aims at harmony. I am interested in surprising dynamics, rhythms and relationships. I create series spontaneously based on techniques and ideas I have been subconsciously developing and refining over the years. Ideas seem to occur naturally as part of the process. Color and line engender shapes that eventually lead me to a harmony of composition which is the ultimate purpose. I don't lean toward representational work because in my view appearances are not what they seem in essence. My spirit has ways of seeing that my eyes cannot comprehend. I find soothing peace when I escape the world of accepted forms and favor expressing myself freely and openly. Creative imagination and spiritual reflection through the act of painting is the closest I get to formlessness without limits. To work with the un-interpreted and yet engender clarity, freedom and consequently evolution. Painting to me IS thinking in action, profound and on all levels. Living in a political, delicate and sensitive world, I must participate in the process of completely consuming the atmospheres around me in order to process them artistically. My paintings are like books and maps. I "write" so much in them. I journey like a guided vessel through rich internal experiences removed from the psychological babbling of the "real" world.

It took several decades to find the strength and courage to begin expressing myself fully in this medium. I first began doing pastels and then experimented with digital art, later I started to use oils and various other media. Much of my progress happened as a result of working with my good friend, most accomplished artist and well known art educator, Francis Coelho, who has shed much light on my ever developing artistic path. The work I did and continue to express as an actor and an acting teacher has influenced me greatly, so did the atmospheres surrounding my early childhood experiences. I am very grateful to Mike Johnson to have created such a wonderful gallery space and to have so enthusiastically embraced my work.

Philippe Benichou
Topanga, California
© 2003
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