Ben Simon

Visual Arts

Ben Simon

Born on Long Island 1974, Ben Simon attended Orthodox Jewish day schools before university hopping. He focused on art and art history at CUNY Queens College, Colorado University, and finished with a BA in fine art and art history from Columbia University in New York. Simon supplemented his studies at a superior atelier then run by Elvie Davis in Boulder Colorado and after those influences and other apprenticeships, began exhibiting.
Simon makes figures who become aware of their confinement in a process of self realization. These figures must be real and not facsimiles or representations and so they acknowledge their confinement.
The interest is in creating a life-like relationship with figures in the flat and round, manipulating color and composition, to entertain the eye. Entertainment is a high form of culture and the bar set for an artist to relate to humanity.
In 2016, Simon exhibited a solo show at Beit Gordon London Gallery in Rishon LeZion. In 2017, he had a new solo exhibition at the Jerusalem Artists’ House, and participated in a group show in 2018, and is now a permanent member at Agripas 12 Jerusalem.
The artist’s book Haggada printed by Fodde Editions is still exhibited as it was at the Jewish Museum in London, Hebrew Union College, the Kol Haot Hagaddah Fair and other distinguished venues.
Ben Simon was awarded the Ish Shalom Prize for Jerusalem Painters in 2005 upon emigrating.