Ben Rea is an artist with an unusual cultural perspective. He was born in Botswana in 1973, and spent summers in Madagascar, Senegal, and other African countries throughout his childhood, These experiences were particularly unusual when juxtaposed with his public schooling in Omaha, Nebraska. It is hard to imagine settings, people, and cultures in greater contrast.

Ben went on to do his formal art training with nationally renowned painters Phil Geiger and Richard Crozier at the University of Virginia. Following his graduation with honors in Art and Psychology in 1996, Ben ran and painted out of his own Gallery in Charlottesville, Virginia before moving to Boulder, Colorado to further explore landscape painting.

" I began to work on the series titled ‘Recycled Sky’ in reaction to the rapid overdevelopment occurring along the Front Range of the Rockies. I thought of using junk mail, to me symbolic of industrialization and overpopulation, to recreate the landscapes being lost in nature. In a sense, I am trying to recycle the beauty that seems to diminish every day. Yet these landscapes, intended to be peaceful, ran in contrast to my intended statement. I thus decided to make an emotional commentary on the faces of my portrait collages. To this day all of the materials I use for my collages are created from recycled magazines."

While intended to provide commentary on nature conservation, Ben has realized his art brings a full circle in another way. His work is unique in that it seems to have a universal appeal. It is both contemporary and traditional, representational and abstract, provocative and soothing.

"Perhaps my work seems ‘universal’ as a result of my upbringing. My art brings me closer to people of different cultures, ages, and backgrounds in very much the way my travels did when I was a child."