The new century marked a turning point in Benoit's life, as the painter abandoned his career in advertising to commit himself full-time to the painting activities he had started in the mid-1990s.
Since the late 1990s, Benoit's work has been mostly inspired by Modern Architecture, including its Brazilian branch (inaugurated by the architect Lúcio Costa, and developed by his apprentice Oscar Niemeyer).
Thirty years later, Benoit contributed to the Elton John AIDS Foundation by offering the singer a painting[8] especially made for him, inspired by his composition Ballad of the Boy in the Red Shoes from his 2001 album Songs from the West Coast.
Passionate[9][10] about the music of the Canadian composer and singer Joni Mitchell, Benoit produced, between 1977 and 1989, a series of works inspired by a selection of fifty poems drawn from her albums from Song to a Seagull (1968) through Chalk Mark in a Rainstorm (1988).
In 1987 the painter sent the book's mockup[14] to Box in Wiltshire, England, where Mitchell was then recording her new album Chalk Mark in a Rainstorm at Peter Gabriel’s Real World Studios.
Altogether, Benoit's production comprises sixty[15] gouaches, engravings (as monotype linocut prints), oil and large-format paintings on paper based on Mitchell’s texts.
In the film, James Hanlon suggested an identical reconstruction of the destroyed towers, while the Mayor of New York City Rudy Giuliani advocated the construction of a 9/11 memorial alongside a brand new development.
In agreement with Gédéon Naudet, Benoit donated a triptych of his proposal[17] to James Hanlon at the New York City Fire Department in Manhattan.
Flesh and Soul" was also presented during the summer of 2014, in the French city of Châlons-en-Champagne,[21][22] and inaugurated by former State Secretary and current Deputy and Mayor of Châlons, Benoist Apparu.
In 2009, the mayor of the city of La Chatre in the French region of Indre, Nicolas Forissier, invited Jacques Benoit to exhibit at the Château d'Ars's art galleries for a two-month event that combined different themes exploited by his work - with an emphasis on the canvas that paid tribute to Oscar Niemeyer's architecture.
Flesh and Soul)[37][38] and organized in the Rubem Valentim Gallery at the Renato Russo Cultural Center, contained 27 large format paintings on canvas and paper, as well as monotypes by different techniques.
According to the painter, the polyptych was made under the influence of Melody Gardot’s music, from her 2012 album The Absence, as well as the composition Nenia by the Italian trumpeter Paolo Fresu.
Tapping different architectural and urban sources, Benoit created in 2007 a series of canvas inspired by Los Angeles, CA, offering a kaleidoscopic nocturne vision of the city.
An over eight-minute-long epic, jazzy and symphonic composition, which explores the confluences of Jazz Fusion, Blues and Rock, Traces of the Western Slopes is generally considered one of Rickie Lee Jones's best works of all time.