Elizabeth Johnson: In our last conversation I felt your work reminded me of the spirit of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince, a children's story that’s considered lofty, philosophical, and critical of society. I asked, "Is your work idealistic? Does it contain notions of kindness, charity, or the social contract?" You responded:
"No, I don't think so. It’s used as a shield against the world and a form of protection. A way of survival. I create brief moments of joy, but I’m definitely not a social worker or a public-school teacher. I do relate to the character of the little prince: always trying to please but always failing. I do feel like I drew the boa constrictor eating the elephant and everyone saw the hat and then I repeatedly tried to draw the sheep but then gave up and just drew a box and said the sheep was inside. I feel like my art is the baobab tree: it keeps growing and I can't get rid of it."
EJ: I love this honest answer. How would you describe security under the baobab tree in 2025?
Benjamin Passione's Studio
Blue Picture with Three Circles, Oil on canvas, 37" x 50"
Benjamin Passione: Well, mostly we live in a brutal world of famine, genocide, war, disease, secret police, and mass shootings. I need to find some type of peace that is productive and positive. I might still be seeking protection from the elements under the tree. It might not be enough, though.
EJ: Can you recall how Blue Picture with Three Circles developed? I love the compression of this piece. Was it stored for a while, or did it happen all at once? Do you remember where you started? Did you turn the piece as you worked? Do you sometimes feel that you can see your emotion as you work?
BP: I really wanted to make a picture with deep, saturated phthalo-ultramarine-Prussian- manganese blue. It happened mostly all at once. It's probably the fastest painted picture in the show. I do turn the paintings as I work, but usually the orientation is set as a vertical or horizontal...
David Panama, Oil on canvas, 44" x 50"
BP: ...So, this painting, for me, would work upside down compositionally but not rotated either way as a vertical picture. I usually see the emotional aspect afterwards. In the moment, I don't think I’m as aware as I would like to be. I do find, in general, that blue paintings bring forth sadness, black paintings depression, bright paintings are uplifting (as in "yellow mania"). Color has quite the dramatic effect on the mood of the picture.
EJ: David Panama reminds me of John Marin watercolors. Do you consider this piece perhaps as an outlier for the show because it almost suggests a real landscape?
BP: Yes. I love John Marin. We are both PAFA alum. He said when he was at the Academy he mostly just goofed around and then when the instructor came around, he would pretend to be busy. I love this story about him. In his work I love the sense of urgency. The economics of them, efficiency. Watercolor was my first medium. John is one of America's greatest watercolorists, second only to––maybe––Andrew Wyeth, Winslow Homer, or John Singer Sargent. I saw a great John Marin show in uptown New York with Bill Scott about fifteen years ago, and the show still hasn't left me. As for the painting being an “outlier,” well, I hope all my pictures could be outliers.
Dirty Fresh, Oil on canvas, 34" x 52"
EJ: Dirty Fresh mixes more organic patterns with what looks like a regular fabric pattern, mid-left of the painting. Was it inspired by a design or improvised? Do those two ways of working usually blend for you? To me, there is a distancing effect in composition that feels like memory. For instance, if you are inspired by John Marin, can you carry that into your own work at will? Or does it have to happen naturally? Does looking at your own drawings sometimes inspire your pieces?
BP: I have always liked patterning in others’ works, especially Vuillard. That patterning mid-left is improvised and then elaborated on. The original mark is made by a pattern in a piece of paper towel being pressed into wet paint. I have seen other artists do this or a similar technique. Francis Bacon would apply paint to corduroy cloth and then apply to the canvas like a stamp.
Benjamin Passione in his Studio
BP: While working, I am trying to block out all that stuff and focus on the needs of the picture, give it the dignity it deserves––whether that means time, focus, distance, attention, washes, lines, or adjustments until it holds my eye.
My drawings can sometimes be studies for larger paintings, but usually they are not. I feel freer in the drawings. Usually, I will have more breakthroughs in the drawings, which don't quite translate in the same way to the paintings. Paintings have more of an analysis of mark making and finish. I think the power of mark making is in its specificity. It can have the ability to affect, time, memory, space, mood. The memory itself can be painted as distant or clear, warm, hostile––an infinite number of possibilities. In a way, memories are all we really have.
I do experience the shift, which I think could be a bad thing. Ideally, I would just feel, but the brain gets in the way. Ideally, making and looking would be simultaneous, like the trumpet player who is not inhaling or exhaling, but breathing through the instrument.
EJ: Almost There is nearly equally divided between a possible view of a hill on the right and a compression of doodles on the left, everything feeling like it's about to bust into new existence. I really like this transformational device. How do you relate to this piece? Is it unusual to make something so evenly divided?
BP: I see a lot of compositions like this picture. I usually see it in Renaissance paintings. A painting that comes to mind is Tiepolo's The Miracle of the Pool of Bethesda at the Philadelphia Art Museum...
Philadelphia Museum of Art, Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo, Italian (active Venice, Würzburg, and Madrid) 1727-1804, The Miracle of the Pool of Bethesda, c. 1759. 71.1 x 115.9 cm
Almost There, Oil on canvas, 44" x 60"
Gray Day, Oil on canvas, 24" x 18"
BP: ...It's one of my favorite paintings there, balanced and dynamic. Picasso's Girl Before a Mirror is another type of compositional model. A world within a world framed in by the picture yet cut in half, almost two pictures in one. I don't know why but this type of composition keeps recurring during my picture making.
EJ: John Thornton's video Family of Artists, Ben Passione, Mickayel Thurin, and the Legendary Maurice (2022) revealed that you have hundreds of stored starts, which you rework years later. Do time and space add to the process? Do you like to forget pieces and then be reunited with them?
BP: I would say time and space add clarity or, at least, I would hope they do. I like to forget paintings and let them be forgotten––that would be my preference. But that's not always how things work. Usually when I see an older painting, I am overwhelmed by disappointment and feel some sort of responsibility to fix the disaster.
EJ: Battle is so balanced but full of change. I especially notice calligraphic lines that, to me, become figures or active movement. This one feels full of air, plenty of space.
Do you remember how many sessions you had with this piece? Did the layers need to dry between working moments? I love the overlay of so many colors.
Did you imagine a drama when you were making it? Or do you prefer to focus on color effects, pattern and line but not story? Do you experience a shift between making and looking while you work?
Battle, Oil on canvas, 38" x 50"
BP: I would guess sixty sessions on this painting. But most sessions are me just looking, sometimes two to three hours of work could amount to zero to three brush strokes. Usually, the bulk of the painting explodes quickly, and then there is this super, super, slow editing process that can take a year, maybe longer. I often will put the painting away for months at a time and let them fully dry, giving me a fresh start. Then I work on the painting for one to three months, put it away for one to three months, and then repeat.
I try not to imagine anything. I try to be the sponge or turn on the faucet. I want to let the picture reveal itself. I have my own interests that I let wander on to canvas and suggest the story.
EJ: Pondering what the next imaginary world might look like, Dirty Fresh balances intriguing design and pathways that break free of realism, while Firmament seems nostalgic by framing past states of being...
Firmament, Oil on canvas, 40" x 60"
EJ: ...Since you seldom paint figures, does human energy feel most expressive when it is disembodied or not in a specific location?
BP: Human energy, disembodied or not, feels most expressive when done with feeling and understanding. In my own pictures I tend to see the human figure as organic matter, no different than a cloud or a tree. I see geometric matter as not organic, but man-made: house, sidewalk, power lines. I guess as artists we are all just developing our own little visual language.
EJ: The Thornton video made me feel truth in the following statements about your paintings:
"Back to basics approach...Tried to relax more...
Be kinder to them not so much on top of them as before, but the paintings paint themselves.
Give them the time they need give them the air and light and breath they need.
Keep them lighthearted
Intense but not too serious...I want to keep things vibrant and dazzling, even comical, energetic, a little hypnotizing.
Allow the viewer to get fully lost...Fine lines and large washes.
Paint scraped away along with a heavy buildup of impasto.
As much variety as I can get, pushing as far as I can go.
Reach into my imagination.
I want an emotional intelligence that's felt.
I wanted to make pictures that don't need to be explained."
EJ: Does the current Gross McCleaf Gallery show build on or continue to evoke this thoughtful litany?
Benjamin Passione's Studio
BP: That quote sounds good. I can't believe I said that. Yes, I would like to continue with this, build more upon it. Let it be the foundation.
EJ: Is making "pictures that don't need to be explained" a relief or goal because viewers tend to ask for explanations that are unnecessary to the central emotional gist of the pieces?
BP: Yes, most people are uncomfortable with the not knowing. But I sometimes can find comfort in the mystery. Most things are unknown. I also don't think I succeed in this, it is just a desire of mine.
Nobody sees a Van Gogh or a Monet and needs an explanation.
They just immediately recognize the beauty of the picture.
––Elizabeth Johnson
(elizabethjohnsonart.com)
edited by Matthew Crain
(@sarcastapics)
Tangled Air, Oil on canvas, 28" x 22"
Benjamin Passione in his Studio
About the Artist
Benjamin Passione was born in Willingboro, NJ in 1987. He attended life drawing classes at the Moore College of Art & Design and then completed the Certificate program at Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. There, he studied painting under artist Bill Scott and Sidney Goodman. Passione is also a recipient of the Lewis S. Ware Travel Scholarship. His work is in the permanent collection of Woodmere Art Museum, and this is his forth solo show at Gross McCleaf Gallery. Passione lives and works in Philadelphia with his wife, fellow artist Mickayel Thurin, and their two sons, Maurice and Maximo. Passione and Thurin were Artists in Residence of the Philadelphia Art Museum during the summer of 2023.
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Benjamin Passione: The Way I Remember It
Opening Reception: Saturday, January 10, 1 - 4 pm
On View: January 8 - February 7
Location: Gross McCleaf Gallery, 123 Leverington Ave, Philadelphia, PA