About Ben Friedle

I live in Portland, Oregon currently but grew up in Marlboro, NY part a big, supportive family, with tons of interesting characters and a lifelong group of friends.  Painting became a part of my life in 1998.  I spent the summer in Moscow, learning Russian language at Moscow State University.  It was this summer that I first discovered painting on a personal level.  Russia has a history of amazing artists, and many museums filled with a wide range of paintings.

One of my classmates was hip and gave me a crash course in art history.  From there I just dabbled making a few acrylic paintings eventually switching to oils and painting more and more.  In 2004 I quit my job and went to La Mosquitia, Honduras for a few months to help my wife with her masters research.  Determined at this point to make painting a much larger part of my life, I took 6 months to study, and paint full time.

I realized that painting full time would require me to either make money from it or be supported by my wife.  Not comfortable with either choice I decided to become an entrepreneur, and co-founded Outlier Solutions Inc.  Just then I met Eric Ludlum and Laurence Sarrazin, who were doing a design project in Portland, Los Osos.  I learned a great deal about the creative process from these two and really started making progress towards my own artistic vision.  I did my first large format painting at their studio in 2006 and that helped me to get comfortable within my style.

During the past five years I moved from working in solitude to surrounding myself with creative people and trying to collaborate more.  It has been great and I am always moved by how creative my friends are and how supportive my wife Christina is.

My goals with painting are to understand color deeply, incorporate lots of rhythm to give the paintings a musical quality, and to be expressive with the brush and unique in my composition.   My master influences are Joan Miro, Paul Klee, Vasily Kandinsky, and Henri Matisse.  I look at lots of Chinese Ink Painting (for composition mainly), engineering graphs and scientific illustrations, and most recently Japanese woodblock.