Benjamin was born in Melbourne in 1971. In his youth he lived in the United States and Mexico. After brief periods of study at
The Stony Brook School on
Long Island and the
Pratt Institute in New York City, he returned to Australia in the early 1990s. He began
exhibiting his artwork 1989 and won the 2005
Packing Room Prize at the
Archibald Prize with a painting of actor
Bill Hunter titled
Staring down the past. He won the 1993, 1994 and 1996
Mosman Art Prizes in Sydney. In 1997 he was awarded the Kings School Art Prize for landscape painting. He was a finalist in the Archibald Prize in
2011,
2013,
2014 and
2015. Benjamin was found dead in the
Murrumbidgee River near
Carrathool, New South Wales on 16 February 2021, aged 50. == References ==