Ben Reeves’ work takes inspiration from memories of growing up in the suburban fringes of Vancouver. He paints largely from memory, often using heightened color and building pictures that foreground the materiality of paint and surface. He is interested in how reality is not fixed and experience is hallucinatory. His paintings, though representational, embrace abstraction and often resist easy pictorial resolution.

Reeves’ work is noted for a broad range of painterly and surface effects. Often very thick, juicy brushwork is juxtaposed with thin, mineral washes, or coarse burlap surfaces are built-up with paint and scraped back down. Recently, he has begun to collage colorfully stained pieces of canvas into his paintings with an interest in how these gestures can have an autonomous, formal independence within a representational image.

Reeves has exhibited his work extensively in Canada (Vancouver Art Gallery, Surrey Art Gallery, Richmond Art Gallery, Simon Fraser University Art Gallery, Kamloops Art Gallery, Museum London, Oakville Galleries, Musee des Beaux Arts, Montreal, and Galerie d’UQAM among others) as well as in the US, England and China. His work has been featured and reviewed in Canadian Art, Border Crossings, The National Post, and The Globe and Mail.

Reeves received a BFA from the University of British Columbia and an MA from Chelsea College of art and Design, UK. His work is in the collections of the National Gallery, Canada; Musée des Beaux Arts, Montreal; Canada House, London; Museum London; Surrey Art Gallery; Vancouver Art Gallery and other public and private collections.

Reeves is currently Associate Professor in the Audain Faculty of Visual Art, and Assistant Dean: Curriculum, at Emily Carr University. He lives outside of Vancouver, Canada.