Ben Johnson is a British painter, best known for his series of large, detailed cityscape

Cityscape

A cityscape is the urban equivalent of a landscape. Townscape is roughly synonymous with cityscape, though it implies the same difference in urban size and density implicit in the difference between the words city and town. In urban design the terms refer to the configuration of built forms and...

s.

Life and work

Ben Johnson was born in Llandudno

Llandudno

Llandudno is a seaside resort and town in Conwy County Borough, Wales. In the 2001 UK census it had a population of 20,090 including that of Penrhyn Bay and Penrhynside, which are within the Llandudno Community...

, north Wales. He studied at the Royal College of Art

Royal College of Art

The Royal College of Art is an art school located in London, United Kingdom. It is the world’s only wholly postgraduate university of art and design, offering the degrees of Master of Arts , Master of Philosophy and Doctor of Philosophy...

 in London. His first solo exhibition was held in New York in 1969. He is the only painter to have been made an honorary Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects

Royal Institute of British Architects

The Royal Institute of British Architects is a professional body for architects primarily in the United Kingdom, but also internationally.-History:...

 (RIBA), having been elected in 1990. In November 2010, he had his first solo exhibition of his paintings at Alan Cristea Gallery

Alan Cristea Gallery

Alan Cristea Gallery is a commercial art gallery on London's Cork Street, founded in 1995 by Alan Cristea. It is the largest publisher and distributor of prints in Europe.-History:...

, London.

Johnson's pictures of buildings and architecture

Architecture

Architecture is both the process and product of planning, designing and construction. Architectural works, in the material form of buildings, are often perceived as cultural and political symbols and as works of art...

 are large and highly detailed. His cityscapes have so far included Hong Kong, Jerusalem, Zurich

Zürich

Zurich is the largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zurich. It is located in central Switzerland at the northwestern tip of Lake Zurich...

, and Liverpool

Liverpool

Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough of Merseyside, England, along the eastern side of the Mersey Estuary. It was founded as a borough in 1207 and was granted city status in 1880...

. The last was painted for Liverpool's European City of Culture celebrations in 2008. It took three years to complete, with the artist working alongside up to eleven assistants, and was completed during an artist residency at the Walker Art Gallery

Walker Art Gallery

The Walker Art Gallery is an art gallery in Liverpool, which houses one of the largest art collections in England, outside of London. It is part of the National Museums Liverpool group, and is promoted as "the National Gallery of the North" because it is not a local or regional gallery but is part...

. The cityscapes are painted from aerial viewpoints, using models to achieve the correct composition. "artistic licence

Artistic license

Artistic licence is a colloquial term, sometimes euphemism, used to denote the distortion of fact, alteration of the conventions of grammar or language, or rewording of pre-existing text made by an artist to improve a piece of...

" is employed to create "ideal" views of the subject cities.

The Liverpool Cityscape

The Liverpool Cityscape comprises 170 hectares of the city, a near bird’s-eye perspective. It encompasses several thousand individual buildings and took Johnson and up to 11 assistants 24,000 person hours to complete it. In making The Liverpool Cityscape Ben explored the city taking over 3000 reference photographs, considered alternative viewpoints, consulted with architects and historians, as well as the people of Liverpool, and absorbed the city’s distinctive atmosphere. Thousands of detailed drawings were produced before the execution of the painting in minute detail.

During February and March 2008 over 45,000 people came to see Ben work on the painting at the Walker Art Gallery in specially created studio. A live web-cam showing his residency in the Walker was set up to enable the world to watch the creation of the painting online. The resulting exhibition had over 160,000 visits.

The Liverpool Cityscape will go on display in the Skylight gallery of the new Museum of Liverpool, when it opens in Summer 2011.

External links

• Ben Johnson, artist web site
• Alan Cristea Gallery, available works from Alan Cristea Gallery
• "Still small voice of calm", article by Jonathan Glancey
  Jonathan Glancey
  Jonathan Glancey is an architectural critic and writer who is the architecture and design editor at The Guardian, a position he has held since 1997. He previously held the same post at The Independent. He also has been involved with the architecture magazines Building Design, Architectural Review,...
  
  . The Guardian
  The Guardian
  The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
  
  , Saturday 9 March 2002