Ben Ho - Qweenstown (Oil)

Ben Ho studied at the Canton University Academy of Fine Arts in China and exhibited in the Fine Arts Exhibition of the Canton District Culture Gallery. Since his immigration to New Zealand in 1988, Ben Ho has won several New Zealand art awards, including the Otago Regional Council Art Award, and the KG Fraser Award at the Royal Easter Show Art Awards.

“My father is a Chinese artist, and when I was a child he showed me how to draw and paint Chinese style.  Later, he arranged lessons for me with his tutor, a Chinese style master, who eventually said to me, “In the future it won’t matter how good you become, you will still recall my style, so you must go out and draw, and study from real life”.

Looking back, I am very glad I followed his instructions.“My Chinese tutor explained about complementary colours and warm and cool colours, but he did not teach us how to mix colours because, as he said, “To most people black and white tonal value drawings are similar, but their feeling for colour will be different.” So I studied the Old Master Impressionists, and did a lot of experimental painting from real life, and eventually I understood how to mix and use colour in my own painting.”