Benson Avea Bego

Country/Region: Papua New Guinea (view other artists)

Benson Avea Bego was born in 1964 near Mt Michael in Okapa, a coffee-growing highland region of Papua New Guinea. He grew up in Aganumpanofi Village, which he left to go and study at a teacher-training college in the provincial town of Goroka.

He taught at the Seventh Day Adventist mission school in Lufa for three years, then returned to Aganumpanofi Village, where he spent a decade as a subsistence farmer, growing sweet potatoes and vegetables.

He has been drawing for as long as he can remember, mostly in pencil and charcoal. His designs, influenced by traditional body ornaments and carvings, have been used by the Tree Kangaroo Conservation Project in the Finnisterre mountains to promote rainforest conservation in Papua New Guinea. They have also found their way on to picture postcards sold at zoo and museum shops in the USA.

He now lives in the remote mountain village of Keweng, where he continues to teach, farm, and draw. He also illustrates publications for Vojtech Novotny an entomologist who conducts research from the New Guinea Binatang Research Center situated in a remote area near Madang. Novotny’s most recently published work ‘Field Notes of a Tropical Biologist’, (Oxford University Press) has been extensively illustrated by Benson.

VIEW SHORT BIOGRAPHY