Benjamin Sullivan was born in Grimsby in 1977. He
studied painting and drawing at Edinburgh College of Art, graduating in
2000. Since then, he has established a growing reputation as a
figurative painter.
His work has been widely exhibited, including
at the Royal Academy and National Portrait Gallery. Among other
distinctions, he has received a Carrol Foundation Award, the Kinross
Scholarship, and a grant from the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation. In
2007 he won the Lynn Painter-Stainers Prize.
He was elected a
member of the New English Art Club and the Royal Society of Portrait
Painters in 2001 and 2003 respectively, becoming the youngest person to
be elected to those institutions. In 2009, he was made a Freeman of the
Worshipful Company of Painter-Stainers.
His work is to be
found in numerous public and private collections, including the National
Portrait Gallery, the Royal Scottish Academy, Parliament House,
Edinburgh, and several Oxford and Cambridge Colleges.
In 2009
he became artist in residence at All Souls College, Oxford, where he
undertook a large commission depicting College staff. The resulting
work, The All Souls Triptych, was displayed at the Ashmolean Museum in
2012 and now sits in one of Hawksmoor's twin towers at All Souls
College.
He lives and works in Suffolk.
