Born in Tuscany, in a seaside town called Forte Dei Marmi in Versilia, Mr Benedetti's affair with art began from a very early age, drawing and painting in his family home.

"I didn't start school until a little later, because I was always quite sick from having big allergies and asthma," Mr Benedetti explained.

"My parents would leave the house for work and I would be crying because I didn't want them to go, so the cleaner we had would give me things to draw with; it was almost like this soothed me.

"The cleaner; she still remembers giving me paper and colours as a small child."

Mr Benedetti struggled with mainstream learning throughout the first stage of his schooling years, finding it hard to focus on learning from the back of the classroom.

"I was much taller than the other students, so the teachers would always put me at the back," he explained.

"I used that time at the back of the classroom to draw comics of the teachers and other funny things because it helped to pass the time, and it made my friends laugh."

During an excursion with the school to Florence - an day trip visiting museums and art galleries - a substitute teacher had looked over Mr Benedetti's shoulder; he was sketching Botticelli's famous 'Portrait of Dante', and the teacher was blown away.

"The substitute teacher was just looking at me with maybe a sense of shock or surprise, and he said something like wow, I would love to be able to draw like this," he said.

"He was young and funny, so I felt like I had a good connection to him and I admired what his words when he said that I should talk to my parents about going to an art school."

Mr Benedetti completed his high-schooling years at the art school now named Artemisia Gentileschi - titled after one of the 17^th century's most famous female artists.

"It was beautiful to go [to the art school], but it was also very challenging," he said.

"Because art school in Italy isn't just drawing all day, subjects are studied as well and I didn't have any idea of what I was doing because no one was an artist in my family."

Showcasing his works in formal exhibitions after this, Mr Benedetti also enjoyed selling his artwork on the streets of Tuscany.

"I preferred selling my artwork on the streets in the south of Italy; I felt more comfortable, and it was more flexible during the summer time," he said.

"But I wondered if [creating art] was what my life should be, or if maybe I would be good doing something else ... so I decided I needed to have a break."

Mr Benedetti moved to London for some years after schooling and showcasing art, where he also met and married his now-wife. Though, over the years, he had somehow lost the connection to his artistic side.

"A few months turned into a few years, and I felt strange because I quit painting in London; where it became more about working and finding which kind of job might be good for me," Mr Benedetti explained.

"It was hard for me to create outside of Italy, and I dont know why; it kind of connected me to my childhood - which also felt strange - and I wondered if I did the right thing abandoning my artwork.

"I think maybe I grew scared to go back to it with all the time that had passed."

Arriving to Australian shores in 2018, COVID-19 surfaced not long thereafter at the end of 2019. With the country headed for lockdown soon after in early 2020, Mr Benedetti and his wife sought refuge with Sydney-based friends who had recently moved to Molong.

The 'pause' of the pandemic, however, lit an old flame within the modest artist.

"When [my wife and I] arrived in Molong from Sydney, we did two-weeks of quarantine," Mr Benedetti said.

"I remember asking a friend if he could buy for me a pencil, an eraser and a sketchbook."

From here, the rest was history; better yet, an artistic history was resuscitated.

"The COVID lockdown made the regular routine stop, but something restarted for me at the same time," he said.

"At first it felt strange, like this bizarre sense of nostalgia - this combination of nostalgia and melancholy - which I think can be like this for a lot of people when we awaken something inside.

"It was a beautiful strange though; of course, the creative process brings painful feelings as well, but without pain we cannot create moments of beauty."

Describing his artwork as "forms of abstraction," Mr Benedetti's pieces bring a hypnotic-like sensation to so many; it's as if he has tapped into a part of the human brain where moments of darkness are so perfectly translated through bursting colour.

"I mean, so many people say they love my artwork, and some people have said they yes, they enjoy it ... but would never hang it inside their house," Mr Benedetti laughed.

"Perhaps [my process] is not accepting reality when I'm creating - when I'm writing, painting, singing - everything is escapism, and the only way for me to do my art is to feel that escape.

"Maybe, though, sometimes we escape reality to somehow feel closer to reality; maybe, to escape, is the only way to feel closer to yourself and someone else."

While there isn't an upcoming exhibition in the works, Mr Benedetti hasn't ruled one out for the future.