Guess what....my name isn't Benco, Benco is an abbreviation of my full name Ben Cockwell. I live in Fox Bay, a village out on West Falkland well away from the urban jungle that is Stanley (population 2,000). As a youngster I had a deal of interest in visual art, I sketched in graphite, charcoal and pastels and did a bit of watercolour painting when I was feeling ambitious. After leaving secondary school and deciding not to pursue art in further education there never seemed to be enough time for drawing (strangely there always seemed to be enough time for beer, girls and such). After 18 years without lifting so much as a pencil I decided to make the time, in the intervening years I'd become keen on photography and this rekindled my interest in drawing and painting. One day I just sat down with a piece of copy paper and, a ballpoint pen and a photo of my dog Boom, I said to myself ‘get on with it’, this was the result:
Portraiture is what I like doing best but I’ll paint any subject, landscapes, architecture, wildlife, still life and so on...however... As with anywhere some iconic things are painted to death, here it is penguins....I try to avoid painting pictures of penguins if possible....and painting pictures of sheep, wooly imbeciles that they are.
Another one of my enthusiasms is wandering around in the wilderness getting rained and blowed on, takes all sorts eh?
