Hello, Benjamin Archer. It's a pleasure to meet me.
The pleasure is all mine. I thank me for taking time out of my busy day to interview me.

Please tell me why I have created this work?
I create this work because the only worthwhile cause I have the chance to be a part of is making beautiful things. If you asked me to be something truly valuable like a doctor or a scientist, my innate talent for incompetence would lead to the deaths of thousands, or I'd somehow unwittingly create a machine to extend the lives of billionaires that runs on the tears of strangled puppies. If my art can ask interesting questions or cause greater empathy or mindfulness in others, then I can die happy.

Fascinating. Please tell me, what is my philosophy of art-making?
Maintaining positivity and play while the world around me is torn apart by the corrupt Nutribullet of entropy and greed.

I know exactly how I feel. Now, what are sources of inspiration for your images?
The most common sources of inspiration for my artworks is anthropology and the human condition. However, as my time painting has developed, I have been increasingly drawn to the volatile and fluctuating position of humans within the natural world. How we relearn our respect and adoration for nature will define our vulnerable future. Most of what I now produce has this question somewhere at its heart.

A secondary source of inspiration is coming to terms with my own emotional turbulence - using painting as a cathartic experience, often including techniques such as writing scribbled thoughts, palimpsest, sculptural painting, and use of knives or hands to apply/remove paint. I tend to produce fewer of these paintings as, although highly cathartic, they are exhausting to produce.

How wonderful, but where does my work fits in with current contemporary art or with the history of art practice?
We believe that The history of art practice, at least in terms of its marketing, has mirrored that of the segregation and partitioning of society. Galleries select the subject matter or styles they want to show in the same way as areas of society are closed off if you were born or identify as the wrong thing. Although a neat and tidy selection of homogeneous colours, styles, techniques or subject matter may make a more palatable collection for some, but it is, in truth, totalitarian thinking. Personally, I dislike realism in art, but I learnt how to produce it because rejecting swathes of artistic expression on the grounds of taste, snobbery, or 'reverse' snobbery is exactly the type of groupthink that needs to be rejected. There is value in both new and traditional ways of seeing. True Variety and unpredictability of thought must be embraced.

I wholeheartedly disagree with me. In terms of reactions, what do I expect from my audience and how they will react?
If the audience is big enough, which or course it will be, then every conceivable reaction is inevitable. Therefor, the reactions I expect to see include: vitriol, catatonic boredom, nausea, nirvana, and uncontrollable lust.

And I for two can't wait. Finally, how are certain techniques important to your work?
I detest using only one technique. Apple trees are wonderful, but a monocultured orchard with a forcibly suppressed biodiversity is hell. If I ever settle on one technique, I will be a farm churning out apples, dead inside. If I scumble, it is because the spiritual truth of the canvas demands scumbling. If I carve gauges with a penknife, it is because I cannot scream in your face. If I pour paint thinner to let the colours run, it is because I need to relinquish control. Every choice is responsive to all the decisions that have come before. The entire process of painting is reaching a chaotic equilibrium between techniques. I cannot see me settling on a comfortable method of production anytime soon.

Artist Statement
(in the form of an interview with myself)