Collection: P.K. Benbow
My name is PK, and I’m a Gay Artist.
Not because I’m a man who paints naked men, but because I choose to paint gay men.
Most of them are my friends and people in my life. They pose for me in photoshoots for reference material, and then I paint them into imaginary worlds, borrowing architectural drafting techniques to ground them in a realistic rendition of light, space, and depth.
Each work of Art is like a painting inside of a drawing. Over my under-drawing is an underlayer of acrylic paint to establish the base colors, and then all the fine details, shadows, and highlights are drawn on top of that in a combination of white, dark, and color-tinted charcoals.
For a long time, I would try to find words to describe my reasons for painting the images I paint. And in doing so, I’d reach for contrived explanations of what each painting was supposed to mean. But more recently I’ve come to understand that my paintings are not born of reason at all.
They come from somewhere deep in that emotional part of my mind that can’t really express itself in words. And often I don’t fully understand my own work until years after I’ve created it.