This whimsical exhibition features a collection of surreal and abstract works from the 20th and 21st Century. Each painting chosen for the collection is filled with great detail and complexity. Each piece requires more then a quick glance to understand the complexity and meaning behind the work.
	American artist Robert Noel Blair (1912-2003) was a prolific western New York artist, painter, sculptor, print maker and teacher. He is best known for his rural life, desert landscapes and WWII scenes. Blair has painted throughout western New York, Maine, Vermont and the American Southwest. His paintings are noted for their range of color, fluidity and movement. Blair is nationally known for his watercolors, but also worked in oils, pen and ink, sculpture, acrylics and drawing. His work is represented in many museums and private collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Butler Institute of American Art, Colgate University and the Franklin D. Roosevelt Collection of Marine Paintings. The Ford Motor Company owns ten of his paintings, and he also painted a large mural for the Bethlehem Steel Corporation in 1947. Robert Blair is listed in the 33rd Biannual Edition of Who's Who in American Art. His work has been the subject of articles in Art News, Art Digest, Plein-Air Magazine and the New York Times.
	American contemporary artist Will Barnet (b. 1911) is an acclaimed painter and print maker who has also taught art at the leading art schools of the United States. Trained at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts School, and the Art Students League of New York, he later taught art at such leading American universities as Yale and Cornell. A prolific graphic artist, Barnet changed his style significantly at different points of his career. His earliest works were influenced by expressionism; they were followed by abstact works in 1950's and 1960's, and finally evolved into more figurative works of silhoutted forms set against geometrically designed backgrounds. His work has been exhibited in prominent museums and galleries in the United States and around the world, and is included in many prestigious collections including the Metropolitan Musem of Art, the Guggenheim Museum in New York and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.
	"Western New York's Wealth of Talent" features the numerous artist's who lived and worked in and around Buffalo, NY during the 19th and 20th Century. Benjaman Gallery has been cultivating the work of regional artist's for over 40 years and the quality of the work done in this area never ceases to amaze the eye. The show features the work of Alexander Levy, Virginia Cuthbert, George Renouard, Amos Sangster and many more.
	"On the Waterfront: Paintings by Robert Noel Blair" will be the first solo exhibition of Blair's work in a Buffalo, NY gallery in over a decade. The exhibition will feature over 40 paintings in a variety of media, each with an aquatic motif. The exhibition, which predmoninantly features waterfront scenes of Western, New York, also pays homage to how widely Blair traveled. Stunning views of Nantucket, Maine, Lake Michigan, and The Virgin Islands will also be on display. The watercolor and mixed media paintings chosen for the exhibit eloquently capture the movement of the ocean, the power of the sun's rays, and the nostalgia of the sandy beaches of summer. Blair who was born in Buffalo in 1912, studied at the ALbright Art School, and from 1931 to 1934 at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Upon returning to Buffalo, in 1934, Blair met renowned watercolorist Charles Burchfield, who was immediately impressed with the fluidity of the young artist's watercolors. Through their mutual admiriation they became lifelong friends and traded painting techniques.
	Creatures of the Night features a fantastic grouping of oil paintings each with a nocturnal theme. The pieces range from the 1800's through 1950. The choice made by an artist to depict a night time scene is one that comes with a great challenge. Each of the artists featured here eloquently captures the night sky and glowing stars. It is not often and not easily acheived.
	Through the end of March, Benjaman Gallery will be featuring the work of Female artist's from the 19th and 20th Century. Paintings, drawings, prints, and sculpture created by female artists will be on display in the main gallery room. The exhibition will include works by Georgia O'Keefe, Caroline Bell, Catherine Koenig, Catherine Parker, Anne Bonnet, Martha Burchfield, Martha Visser't Hooft, Virginia Cuthbert, Irene Zevon and many more.
	The Gallery is currently featuring over 50 items under $500. Original works of art ranging from $10 through $500 by the world's best known artists. On display and for sale are pieces by Picasso, Dali, Agam, Warhol and many other regional and national artists. Original paintings, graphics, sculpture and objets d'art are for sale from the 19th, 20th, and 21st Centuries. Every genre is represented from realism to surrealism and everything in between!
	Irene Zevon, born in Brooklyn, was the first child in a Ukranian family of working class immigrants. She began her art career studying with Nahum Tschacbasov in New York City and Woodstock, NY. Tschacbasov studied with artist such as Leopold Gottlieb, Marcel Gromaire, and Ferdinand Leger, whose techniques were passed down to Zevon. Tschacbasov while teaching belonged to a group of ten artist which included the likes of Mark Rothko and David Burliak. Zevon worked in a modernistic lyrical abstract-figurative style in the mediums of oiil and acrylic painting, linoleum block prints and mono-type prints. Her artworks are in private and museum collections throughout the US including the permanent collections of the San Franciso Museum of Fine Art, Butler Institute, California State Library, Library of Congress, The Dallas Museum of Fine Art and many more.
	Chuck Fee Wong was born in San Francisco's Chinatown in the early 20th Century. At the end of the 1920's Wong moved to New York City and set up a studio in the Lower East Side. Wong spent the rest of his life in New York but traveled widely. He painted scenes from the Bahamas, Boston, Rhode Island, Europe, and all over New York State. Wong worked in the "Ashcan" tradition, documenting life as he saw it, without regard to conventional ideals of beauty. His paintings cast a new and vivid light on American life from the 1930's through present day. Wong sumbmitted several award winning pieces to The Salmugundi Club in New York early in his career, but never attempted a major one man show in his lifetime. The Benjaman Gallery will have over one hundred works on display, viewed publicly for the first time.