Ben Sadler’s recent series, You and I (2024) and Exclamations! (2025), brings together charming, sometimes amusing, and deeply poignant portraits of imagined people. Rich in colour and full of personality, these paintings invite us into a world of fleeting encounters and private thought. In both series, the painting titles follow the alphabet, although You and I omits the letters U and I.
Sadler began with the idea of the many layers at play during an exhibition opening: the work, the space, the person in the space, and the shared experience of conversation. As he explains, he was interested in how those layers carry through to the act of looking at the paintings. As we meet these imagined exhibition-goers, questions quickly arise: who are they, where have they come from, and what are they thinking? Some meet our gaze directly; others look away. Pensive, reflective, and absorbed in their own thoughts, they seem to exist outside a fixed moment in time.
In 2025, Hurtwood Books published You and I, a publication bringing together both bodies of work: You and I and Exclamations!. It includes a specially commissioned creative text by Catherine O’Flynn, a foreword by Deborah Kermode, Chief Executive and Artistic Director of Midlands Arts Centre (MAC), Birmingham, and an interview with London-based creative coach, podcaster, and public speaker Ceri Hand.
Born in Birmingham in 1977, Ben Sadler spent much of his childhood drawing and spending time with the family cats. He studied at the Ruskin School of Fine Art, Oxford (1995–98), and the Royal College of Art, London (2002–04). Since 2001, he has worked as one half of the artist duo Juneau Projects with Philip Duckworth, alongside making his own paintings, music, poems, and videos. He lives and works in Birmingham.
