Andrew Benyei: An artist’s double life
by Ashley Anderson (©2002 The Muskoka Sun Limited)
 Judie and Andrew Benyei

Judie Benyei stands on the steps of her Toronto home, smiling warmly. On the opposite side of the door, and a little bit in the shade, her husband Andrew stands, a little more shyly but smiling just the same. The door opens, and the world inside is a collage of art and home; just one of the dualities that seem omnipresent in Andrew Benyei’s life.

In the living room a large painting of the Segwun commands an entire wall. Andrew says the people on it are both real and fictional.
Andrew’s well-known bathtub sculptures flank the couch on either side: a woman on the right, a man on the left. In the dining room a pig sculpture lazes about in the centre of the table. A matching painting hangs on the wall. In the TV room a sculpture of a woman pushing her hand through a sheet of glass clings to the wall. A sculpture of a man pushing his head through a manhole tops the speaker opposite.

Businessman and artist. Soft-spoken and assertive. Light-hearted and heavy-hitting. These are all Andrew Benyei.

"I think of myself as a sculptor who paints," he says, ironically seated on a wingback in front of his own excellent painting of a boy on a tube.
"I probably spend about 80 per cent of my time doing sculpture.

"That’s one of the comments people have made, that my paintings also tend to be sculptural; that’s sort of the way I visualize things, in three dimensions."

Those three dimensions seem somehow vaster and more intense in his paintings than in real life; his distances larger, his shadows deeper, his horizons farther away. "I’m interested in playing with light," he encapsulates.

With this artistic vision, it is a wonder that Andrew has been an artist for a relatively short period of his professional life. "I was always very good at art in public school," Andrew begins. "It was always lots of fun, but I never saw it as a career ‹ because it couldn’t be a career if it was enjoyable. So I never pursued it." Instead, he pursued engineering, going on to obtain a Masters in Business Administration, and eventually becoming a manager. "I carried a briefcase for almost 20 years," he says. "And then I started to decide I really disliked what I was doing." Andrew says he found his job very stressful, so he took an evening course at the Ontario College of Art (now the Ontario College of Art and Design) for interest sake.

"And I liked it," he says. "And I took another course the next semester, and so on and so forth.

"And then in 1990 I realized that life is too short to be doing something that you don’t really enjoy doing, and I walked away from my career and became a full-time artist. That was my mid-life crisis," he says with a laugh.

Somewhat more profitable than the average mid-life crisis, Andrew’s took him into a successful new line of work. "At the time, I figured, well, the average artist in Canada makes under $7,000 a year, but I had to make a living at; I thought, you know, the worst thing that could happen is that I have to go back to doing what I did before. And that was 12 years ago now."

"And you’ve been successful beyond your wildest dreams," adds Judie proudly, from where she sits on the chair opposite.

"I’m still here," Andrew smiles.

"One of the difficulties I find is to have a mindset of who you are," he continues. "One of the differences between men and women in general is that women tend to define themselves in terms of who they are, whereas men tend define themselves in terms of what they do and for me, to move from being the manager of a company to an artist, it took a long time to internalize that change. All of a sudden all the time became my time. I tell people, "Before I had to work five days a week, now I only work seven.’"

"You enjoy it a lot more," Judie agrees.

Andrew cautions that you have to be careful not to make a career out of a hobby, just because you enjoy it, though. "For me, doing art as a career is as enjoyable as having it as a hobby," he says.

"But it does take discipline," Judie points out.

"You have to take it seriously if you want to make a career of it," Andrew reiterates. Taking it seriously means working hard at building a network, and making yourself known to people and prospective buyers, and galleries.

"There is a business side of it, if you’re going to make a living out of it," says Andrew. "You do have to be disciplined, you have to work at it."

"And you have to deliver," Judie adds.

"One of the advantages I had, over someone who starts young, is the life experience I had to draw on, and for me it was just learning the mechanics and the techniques of the art. Having started straight out of school I may have had the techniques, but much less to say."

That’s one of the most fascinating things about Andrew’s art: what the piece is actually saying.

His work is at once both humourous and serious, both philosophical and whimsical. His people are characters, and yet real.

"As you can see, much of my work relates to a business environment," says Andrew. Because of this focus, and the insight his work shows, Andrew’s art has a particular appeal for people in the business world - they can relate to it because he can relate to it. It is also, as he says, "a little edgier."

For instance, the sculpture of the woman reaching through the glass is representative of women breaking through "the glass ceiling." One copy of that piece was purchased by a top woman executive in a big publishing company in Toronto. She told the Benyeis that she would look at it for inspiration.

"A lot of people say that about Andrew’s sculptures - that they’re inspirational," says Judie. "They speak to them emotionally."

"I’ve seen my wife, and others, up against some of these issues," says Andrew. If he had never been a part of that business world, he might never have had that insight. "I don’t know what my art would have been [if I had never been in business], but it may have been more banal," speculates Andrew.

But the humour? The humour would always have been there. "That’s my personality as well, so it is my view of life. I always think life is too serious to enjoy," he sums up.

Which is why making his life a little less serious, and doing what he really enjoys, was a great move for him. "I was truly delighted," says Judie, about what she felt when Andrew first said he wanted to be a professional artist. "I wanted him to be fulfilled.

"In a lot of ways, our life has become more interesting," she adds. The people they meet, the places they visit, the experiences they have, all combine to add interest to their lives. She says there’s also an element of celebrity that comes with Andrew’s work. While they were vacationing in the United States, people recognized his name from his work; and one piece was featured in the movie The Santa Clause, starring Tim Allen.

Because his success and his talent are evident, people approach Andrew and tell him about things that they would rather be doing in life, but are too afraid to do. Andrew "lends a sympathetic ear," says Judie.

"I mean, you can’t ever give them advice," says Andrew. "You have to do it for yourself. You have to take the leap."

Once that leap was taken, Andrew says, "it moved along on its own course." It took him five years to make the transition, and the moment of truth came "when I signed my resignation letter," says Andrew.

And thus the final, and perhaps most profound duality of Andrew Benyei: his work as inspiration, and his life as inspiration.

This articly reproduced with kind permission from:
The Muskoka Sun Ltd.
P.O. Box 1600
203-175 Manitoba St.
Bracebridge, ON
P1L 1V6
Tel: (705) 645-4463
Fax: (705) 645-3928

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