Trudy Benson was born in 1985 in Richmond, Virginia. She received her BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University before earning her MFA from Pratt Institute. She lives and works in New York.Benson's paintings explore layering as both image and process, probing how visual hierarchies are constructed and perceived. Her compositions reference systems of organization — grids, networks, sequences — while remaining resolutely fluid. Her large-scale abstract works are characterized by hyperbolized gesture: extreme impasto, hyper-saturated color, and alliterated marks that carry playful visual echoes of 1980s graphic design and early computing. Working across enamel, acrylic, oil, and spray paint, Benson allows competing colors, textures, and shapes to overlap and interact in surprising, dynamic ways. By separating marks from the functional logic of the programs that inspired them and reintroducing them as independent graphics, her paintings open a portal between on-screen imagery and formal abstraction. The result, as one critic observed, is a practice that took on the history of painting — armed with analog paint and digital thinking — and won.What distinguishes Benson's work from digital image-making techniques of the past is her sustained attention to the experience of seeing and handling paint itself — its viscosity, its sculptural presence, its capacity to hold time. Benson has presented solo exhibitions at Miles McEnery Gallery (New York), Galerie Krinzinger (Vienna), Loyal (Stockholm), Ceysson & Bénétière (Paris and Saint-Étienne), Team Bungalow (Los Angeles), and Half Gallery (New York), among others. Her work has been included in group exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago and the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver. Her paintings are held in the permanent collections of the Portland Museum of Art, the Aïshti Foundation, Saatchi Gallery, and the Hudson Valley Museum of Contemporary Art, as well as the Schwartz Art Collection at Harvard Business School and the collections of Beth Rudin DeWoody and Susan and Michael Hort.