Ben Crase was born in Butte, Montana. He grew up in this frontier mining town formerly known as the "richest hill in the world" where, at the turn of the 19th century, prospectors poured in abundance, attracted by the riches buried in the mountains. His family comes from this history and the artist, self-taught painter is inspired by this dark past to bear witness to it, but also to reappropriate it and give another angle of perception.

The saloons and hotels of Butte form the world of Ben Crase's paintings and the characters who frequent them his subjects. His paintings question the way we describe this period of modern American history. In large oil and oily pastel compositions, Ben Crase's Neo-Nabi painting uses pure and vivid colors, exaggerating reality. He gives to his paintings his own decorative and symbolic logic offering a superposition of backgrounds, tapestries, decorations, costumes, textures and figures that transform his paintings into quasi-cinematic scenes.