For Australian artist Benjamin L.M., painting is an act of expression in which colour, gesture, and meaning converge. Based in New Jersey, USA, he works primarily in figurative art, occasionally turning to abstraction as a space for experimentation, intuition, and unexpected discoveries. Across both approaches, his paintings carry a distinctive intensity, reflecting his belief that the artist’s life force remains present in the paint, the canvas, and the words chosen to identify each work.
Benjamin’s three abstract paintings, Yellow Pink Orange 7 (2023), Improvisation Aqua Purple Scarlet Brown (2025), and Orange And Purple In Mystery Love (2023), demonstrate different dimensions of this expressive approach. One explores the symbolic possibilities of a number, another finds unexpected beauty in architectural forms, and the third considers the unpredictable energy of love. Together, they reveal an artistic sensibility that embraces ambiguity while remaining committed to the power of interpretation.
Yellow Pink Orange 7: A Number Reimagined
Created in 2023, Yellow Pink Orange 7 is an acrylic and spray-paint composition on canvas measuring 50 × 35 inches. Its central image, an orange number seven surrounded by the fiery intensity of sour yellow and burnt red, transforms a familiar numerical symbol into something strange, immediate, and almost mythic.
For Benjamin, the number seven is more than a graphic element. It becomes a presence, an emblem of greatness and a symbol of a reality extending beyond ordinary perception. The artist describes the seven as having come alive, as though its significance has remained hidden until this moment. Through colour and contrast, the number acquires an identity of its own, standing within an atmosphere of combustion and renewal.
The painting’s fiery palette reinforces this sense of transformation. Yellow and red suggest heat, urgency, and the destruction of established forms, while the orange seven occupies the composition as a force of emergence. The image evokes a world undergoing fundamental change, where deception gives way to truth and inherited assumptions are burned away to make room for new possibilities.
Benjamin connects this transformation to his vision of a coming Golden Age, describing a moment when the galaxy itself seems to be moving towards a higher state. Whether understood spiritually, symbolically, or as an imaginative declaration of hope, the painting invites viewers to consider how familiar symbols can acquire new meaning. Its abstraction is not an escape from reality but a way of reimagining it.
Improvisation Aqua Purple Scarlet Brown: The Beauty of Brutalism
In Improvisation Aqua Purple Scarlet Brown (2025), Benjamin turns his attention to the visual character of Brutalist architecture. Executed on a 54 × 43-inch canvas using gouache, acrylic, spray paint, and oil stick, the work draws on the block-like structures and imposing geometry associated with the architectural movement. Aqua, purple, scarlet, and brown establish a palette that both disrupts and energises the solidity of the forms.
Brutalism has often been associated with monumental buildings, heavy materials, and an austere visual language. Benjamin approaches these structures from a different perspective, finding an unexpected beauty in their uncompromising shapes. His description suggests that buildings once perceived as oppressive can, with time and changing sensibilities, become objects of fascination. They may be encountered not simply as functional structures but as sculptural compositions in the built environment.
The painting’s title begins with the word Improvisation, an important indication of how the artist approaches abstraction. Rather than presenting a literal architectural illustration, the work allows colour and shape to establish their own relationships. The blocks suggest constructed environments without requiring a specific building or location. Their arrangement becomes an exploration of visual rhythm, mass, and contrast.
The combination of aqua and purple with scarlet and brown brings an expressive charge to the architectural vocabulary. Colour softens the severity of the imagined structures while simultaneously intensifying their presence. What might otherwise appear rigid becomes playful, unexpected, and alive with possibility.
Here, Benjamin demonstrates how abstraction can change the way familiar forms are perceived. Architecture becomes painting, and the imposing geometry of buildings becomes a language of colour and composition. The result encourages viewers to reconsider the relationship between utility and beauty, suggesting that even structures associated with restraint can acquire a surprising emotional and artistic appeal.
Orange And Purple In Mystery Love: The Unpredictability of Connection
In Orange And Purple In Mystery Love (2023), Benjamin explores the complicated energy of human relationships through two abstract figures. Painted in acrylic and spray paint on a 54 × 65-inch canvas, the work places an orange figure and a purple figure in a relationship defined by movement, attraction, conflict, and uncertainty.
The figures appear to move towards one another, sometimes colliding and sometimes missing, their forms entwined through an unusual sense of distance. They are connected, but not in a conventional or entirely harmonious way. Their interaction suggests the imperfect rhythms of intimacy, where closeness can coexist with misunderstanding and where the desire to connect does not always produce an easy resolution.
Behind them, fluorescent green and dull blue evoke the shifting illumination of the northern lights. This striking backdrop introduces another dimension to the painting, creating an atmosphere that feels simultaneously luminous, disorienting, and mysterious. The vivid colours do not simply decorate the scene; they intensify the emotional instability of the encounter.
The contrast between orange and purple gives each figure a distinct visual presence, while their interaction makes separation and connection difficult to distinguish. The painting resists an idealised representation of romance. Instead, it presents love as an experience that must be lived through uncertainty, with all its risks, intensity, and contradictions.
Benjamin’s interpretation is direct: no one can know with certainty whether a relationship will last. That uncertainty, however, is not a reason to retreat from experience. His message is to approach love with the full force of one’s life, accepting that meaningful encounters cannot always be controlled or predicted.
Through abstraction, the artist captures something that figurative representation alone might struggle to express: the emotional force of two people moving towards one another while remaining fundamentally unpredictable.
The Poetic Language of Painting
Benjamin L.M.’s practice extends beyond the visual arts. He is also a published poet with five books to his name, and this literary background informs the way he approaches titles and artistic meaning. For him, a title is not merely a label attached to an image. It can function like a one-line poem, offering a concentrated interpretation that guides the viewer without exhausting the possibilities of the work.
This relationship between painting and poetry is evident across the three abstractions. Yellow Pink Orange 7 transforms a number into a declaration of renewal. Improvisation Aqua Purple Scarlet Brown identifies a process of spontaneous creation while naming its visual vocabulary. Orange And Purple In Mystery Love establishes an emotional encounter through colour and a sense of mystery.
Although Benjamin describes much of his abstract work as unintentional, meaning remains central to its impact. Intuition and interpretation are not opposites in his practice. Rather, spontaneous decisions can produce images that acquire significance through the artist’s subsequent reflection and through the viewer’s own experience.
An Art of Intuition and Possibility
Across these three paintings, Benjamin L.M. approaches abstraction as a meeting point between instinct and meaning. Numbers become symbols of transformation, architecture becomes an unexpected source of beauty, and colour becomes a vehicle for the uncertain dynamics of love. Each work begins with a different visual premise, yet all three carry the intensity that defines his wider artistic outlook.
His paintings invite viewers to remain open to what cannot be fully explained. Their meanings are articulated through titles and descriptions, but their visual energy allows for interpretations beyond the artist’s own words. In this space between intention and discovery, Benjamin’s work finds its distinctive character: an art that embraces uncertainty while insisting on the vitality of the act of creation itself.