How would you describe your art?

I’d say it’s kind of a mixture of expressionist, abstract things but then also maybe more surreal things: like what you see, but then it’s like in your imagination.

What does your art mean to you?

I guess it’s like the way that you look at the world, but then the way you perceive it is much more emotional and abstract than the way it actually can be portrayed in photographs. So I guess it’s more like drawing out and painting emotions and the visual together.

How do you start the process?

It basically always starts by sketching faces or something in a café, or I do some life drawings – at the moment, I’m drawing my friends – and then from those drawings, I abstract it further through painting.

How has your Architecture degree changed your art?

I thought it would kind of collapse it down a bit, but it hasn’t; it’s kind of expanded my perceptions because, through studying Architecture, you get a more clear understanding of space and materials, as well as more skills like Photoshop I would not have had otherwise.

Vulture Introducing: Leo Benedict

It’s also made it more varied, doing more graphic-y artwork I wouldn’t have done.

Do you get nervous showing you art?

Yeah, sometimes. Like recently, I’ve done things with nudes – as in photographs that then I’ve worked into or on top. And they’re of myself, or my friends, so at first, I’d show people and then they’d maybe not realise it was me, and I wouldn’t want to tell them it was me.

But then they’d realise and they’d change their perception of it and wouldn’t want to have it on their wall... Or they would but would feel weird about it!