Ben Robson Hull

Great Ridge Sunrise, Ben Robson Hull. Is it a painting that looks like a photograph, or a photo that looks like a painting?

Rain Man, Ben Robson Hull

It's very likely that the most overused, and misused word in the art world today (or perhaps the entire world) is, in fact, the word "artist." Just try Googling (or Binging) the word sometime and you'll see what I mean. You'll be rewarded with everything from con artists to musicians who can play the violin with their bare feet. In between you'll encounter virtually every profess-sional in the fine arts including, of course, the traditional painters, sculptors, filmmakers, etc. As a writer I'm often guilty of using the "catch-all" term when I should really be more specific. The British landscape "artist," Ben Robson Hull is an excellent case in point. The layman would immediately picture Hull, brush in one hand, palette in the other daubing away at an easel erected in some lovely field, possibly overlook-ing a seashore. There's no question that Hull is an artist, nor that he specializes in landscapes. However, he's probably never painted one in his entire life. Nonetheless, he does have the same mentality and eye for exquisite content, detail, and beauty of any landscape painter who ever cleaned a brush. Ben Robson Hull "paints" with a 36MP Nikon D810 professional camera. The list price for Hull's digital "brush" is around $2,800.

St. Patrick's Well, Ben Robson Hull



Like most landscape painters, Hull captures other genres besides lovely sunrise vistas as in Great Ridge Sunrise (top). His vertigo-inducing St. Patrick's Well (above) or his more elegant Queen's House Tulip Staircase (left) are repre-sentative of Hull's architectural compositions. Hull's black & white Rain Man (above, right) has garnered several awards in various photographic exhibitions. There's no mistaking either of these for a painting.

 

 

 

 

Queen's House Tulip Staircase,

Ben Robson Hull

 

 



 

Sleepy Hollow, Ben Robson Hull

Ben’s creativity is driven by the natural environment and the seasons, both clearly visible in his work. Many of his images have been produced locally near his home in Sheffield, England, and the Derbyshire Peak District National Park (above). Travel and architecture often feature in his work. Hull has a real passion for exploring the planet, its people, and special places. Some of Ben’s images have been captured in such diverse places as Peru, Barcelona, London, Paris, Italy, Australia, Austria and all over the UK to name just a few. Ben completed work for a Professional Diploma in Photography at the Photography Institute (2012-–2013) while consuming more than sixty books on photography in a self-teaching effort to provide himself with a long overdo education in art.

Images from Hull's Peruvian photo-expedition.



Before that, Hull graduated from Sheffield Hallam University (2000--2003) with a degree in Civil Engineering followed by a career in the sciences. In looking back, Ben feels the first 30 years of his working life he missed out on art entirely, though he has certainly made up for this lost time recently with Memberships and involvement in his local Pho-tographical Society, the Royal Photographical Society, and various organizations or online groups, which have provided him with great oppor-tunities to exhibit, enter competitions, and receive valuable feedback on developing his body of work.

 

Two careers and
too many interests.

The life cycle--beauty in life and death.

Ben Hull always tries to find places off-the-beaten-path or those not usually frequented by other people. Most days, however, usually end up with a significant amount of time editing on the computer and then proof printing to get the optimum possible print from the raw data. This can be very time consuming. Many artists spend a lot less time producing a detailed painting than Hull does trying to perfect the perfect print! Hull's evenings are often spent on social media and in contacting clients to discuss requirements. Finally, Hull usually tries to find an hour each day to research his next project, always looking to find something unique and different to undertake.

Hull's "take" on two frequent ingredients in England's gastronomical art--
Strawberries and Sardines. Just never serve them both at the same time.

And what would a British photographer be without two or three iconic stock photos of London? Hull is a frequent contributor to Getty Images. Working in central England, light, location, and of course, the damnable English weather, usually conspire against the would-be photographer, meaning he or she has to react and respond to what they find. Typically, a photography session lasts half a day to a full day depending on the type of subject. Hull tries to capture the subject from as many different angles as possible. He finds it amazing how many times a shot the artist(meaning the photographer) thinks is the best ends up being rejected later as there was something distracting in the background that went unseen at the time. By the same token, backup shots sometimes capture a really fortuitous element without the photographer even realizing it. Hull loves it when these things happen. People often call it luck, and sometimes it is, but there's also the research, planning, and hard work, which play a big part in such shots.

The Tower Bridge (upper image), Big Ben (just above), Winchester Palace and Cathedral all remain. Red phone booths like the one above, also remain, but their numbers are dwindling. I saw very few when we were in London this past spring.

Probably the Best Cat in the World,
Ben Robson Hull

 

A Tale of Two Terminals

Grand Central Station--designed (and redesigned) for busy.

"It's like Grand Central Station around here." That's a phrase my mother sometimes used when friends or relatives came calling or during other stressful moments when it seemed to her that the whole world had invaded our otherwise quiet, small-town home. I know for a fact she never passed through the famed New York City landmark and probably had only the vaguest idea of what it looked like. I know I certainly didn't. In all likelihood she knew only that it was a very hectic busy place. I was a senior, about to graduate from high school before I ever laid eyes on the early 20th-century Beaux-Arts architectural masterpiece trying to impart the same graceful French stylings of the Orsay Train Station in Paris  (now a museum), to the rapidly expanding transportation needs of a modern, bustling, hectic, busy city. That was 1963. I was quite unaware of the fact that New York City's other major rail hub, nearby Penn Station, was about to give up its structural "life" in what would become an historic, landmark case of greed and architectural desecration. The controversy resulting from the demolition of Penn Station was the catalyst for New York City's Landmark Preservation Commission which would, just a few years later, save Grand Central Station from a similar fate.

  

Penn Station main concourse, circa 1956.

Both terminals were architectural relics of a bygone era of grand palaces and hotels almost before they were built. Grand Central Station began rising from the huge mass of limestone bedrock undergirding the Manhattan "concrete jungle" in 1903. The New York Central and Hudson River Railroad, the New York and Harlem Railroad, and the New York and New Haven Railroad all came together on 42nd Street to facilitate rail traffic in and out of the city. The present-day building, designed by Bradford Gilbert, was erected to replace the former Grand Central Depot (below-upper image), built on the site in 1871. No one protested when it was torn down. By today's standards, and even those of the time, it was one of the ugliest buildings in city.

 

The old Grand Central Depot was designed for steam locomotives. Its 1903 replacement handled only electric.

 

From the advent of mass rail transportation during the second half of the 19th-century, architects struggled mightily to adapt antique styles to the new and demanding requirements of bringing people, and the "rolling stock" to move them about, together without disrupting the social niceties of the time. Starting in England, but equally perplexing in big cities like New York, for the most part these architects and engineers failed miserably as the concentrated as much (or more) on style than they did function. Grand Central and Penn Station terminals were among the monolithic battlegrounds where this conflict can best be seen. Penn Station died in this war. Grand Central Station suffered numerous architectural "wounds."

In that both stations had much of their "guts" underground, the massive excavations needed to construct the all-important passenger platforms could only have been accomplished through the arrival of the William Otis steam shovel in 1839.

Most of the station's 49 acres is underground. Beside the Metro North trains, you can get subway trains 4, 5 to the Bronx or Brooklyn, the 6 train north to the Bronx, the 7 train to Queens, or S train to Times Square (I always take a cab). There's also a special underground line, which is no longer used nor available for public view, from Grand Central to the Waldorf Astoria. This was so that President Franklin D. Roosevelt would not be seen by the public as he traveled to and from the hotel and was helped in and out of the train due to his physical disabilities.



By the early years of the 20th-century, the automobile had come to dictate the layout, if not the facade, of Grand Central Station as much as the unseen "electric trains" below.

For the rest of us, there are several entrances to Grand Central Station. From the east, you pass through a market filled with fresh loaves of bread, cheese, jams, caviar, fruits and vegetables arrayed like fine jewelry. From Vanderbilt Avenue on the west side, there are restaurants and shops. The north entrance may seem the least interesting, but has some of the finest restaurants in New York. However, the best way to enter the station is from 42nd Street, where you'll see the old Pan Am Building (now the home of MetLife) rising behind the station like a backdrop (below).

The 42nd Street (at Park Avenue) entrance to Grand Central Station today.

The four-faced clock can be
read from any angle.

Above the main entrance is the Tiffany clock surrounded by Roman gods. There you'll pass through heavy oak and glass doors into a room that houses the photography and art exhibitions whenever they are held. Just beyond that, the main terminal with its ceiling, vaulted, and exalted, painted with the constel-lations of the zodiac (below). The old ticket windows are still there along the wall along with the four-faced clock (right) above the information booth. Across the way are the numbered entrances for the tracks for the trains heading out of town.

The ceiling of the Grand Central Station main concourse featuring the art of Paul César Helleu.

The original Penn Station, designed by the Beaux Arts architects McKim, Mead & White, opened in 1910. It was one of New York's grandest structures. In this day and age, it's hard to believe the Pennsylvania Railroad got away with demolishing this Neo-classical white beauty. If they needed a big parcel of land, why didn’t they tear down the Port Authority Bus Terminal instead? Few would have protested that. Penn Station’s destruction subsequently ushered in an era of historic preservation. The building was demolished in October of 1963 to create the current facility. The ensuing controversy helped fuel the preservation movement in New York and the passage of the Landmarks Law in 1965.

New York City's Penn Station was named for the Pennsylvania Railroad, it's builder and original tenant.

About ten block and 55 years now
separate the two transportation
landmarks. A tail of two terminals
unites them.

Penn Station occupied an eight-acre plot bounded east and west by Seventh and Eighth Avenues, and north and south by 31st and 33rd Streets in Mid-Town Manhattan. The original Pennsylvania Station head house (for passengers) and train shed (for trains) were considered a masterpiece of the Neo-Classical style and one of the great arch-itectural works of New York City. Penn Station maintained its arch-itectural grandeur until World War II, when rail usage started to decline. In the 1950s, the Pennsylvania Rail-road sold the air rights to the prop-erty and downsized the railroad sta-tion. The above ground head house and train shed of the station were demolished and replaced by Madi-son Square Garden and Pennsyl-vania Plaza between 1963 and 1969. Today, the site is also occu-pied by a hotel and an office build-ing. Below ground, the concourses and waiting areas were heavily renovated during this time. However, the platforms at the station's lowest level were not significantly modified, and evidence of the original station still exists at platform level.

 

New York City's Penn Station today (or what's left of it).

 

"Any city gets what it admires, will pay for, and, ultimately, deserves. Even when we had Penn Station, we couldn’t afford to keep it clean. We want and deserve tin-can archi-tecture in a tinhorn culture. And we will probably be judged not by the monuments we build but by those we have destroyed."

--"Farewell to Penn Station,"

New York Times editorial, October 30, 1963 

Lace Sculpture

Agnes Herczeg's twigs and thread

Over the past century or so Modern Art has often been propelled forward by what we've come to call "mixed media." Picasso comes to mind first and foremost for his introduction of extraneous materials such as newsprint, wallpaper, fibers, and other manmade items into his paintings. I also recall his famous bull's head made from a metal bicycle seat with bicycle handlebars welded to the rounded part to form horns. As photography freed art from the demands of representing real life in a realistic manner, artists embraced "art for art's sake" or simply art about art. From then on virtually any material and any technical craftsmanship such items demanded became acceptable when used in a creative manner to impart the artist's vision or message. Some such works fall under the heading of "conceptual art" in which the message dominates the work itself. Such work often raises the question, is it art or is it not?

 

None of Agnes Herczeg's dainty masterpieces bear a title.

Hungarian artist Agnes Herczeg would probably take offense at labeling her exquisite little creations (top) and the piece above as mixed media. They are, in fact, a happy marriage of tatting (lace making) embroidery, even macramé with the simplest, yet carefully chosen support of wood in its natural forms. Only now, in examining the photos of Herczeg's work did I realize than not one of her pieces bears a title (at least insofar as I've been able to determine). That makes her art difficult to discuss on an individual basis. She apparently considers that each piece speaks for itself, or perhaps invites the viewer into the creative process by adding titles themselves. In my case here, I'll take the first option and leave the latter to those seeing Herczeg's work for the first time.

"Gazing into Infinity."

Herczeg combines delicate lace art with branches of found wood to create scenes depicting the contemplative beauty of human-ity. This is not art for art's sake. The intricate portraits showcase women as they recline, sleep, and gaze as if into infinity. The wood serves as an anchor for their activities, a place where the characters rest their bodies, or the floor on which they stand. Herczeg also uses it as a striking visual contrast--the looseness of the lace and the solidity of the wood are at odds, but become harmonious when linked together.

At times, Agnes Herczeg's works take on a fairly abstract appearance.



Herczeg’s lace sculptures are created using traditional techniques. She has extensively stud-ied the crafts of embroidery and lace-making, from needle lace to macramé. She incorporates a variety of these stitches into each composition. This proves to be a meticulous, detail-oriented endeav-or. Lace-making is an extremely time consuming occupation, taking several days just to complete even a small piece.

 

 

 

 

 

A sculptural delicacy.

 

 

 

 

 

Because the lace art is so tedious, it’s vital that Herczeg has a well-thought plan for how to execute the work. “Design is a significant part of the creative process,” she explains, “ because I have to think through not only the visual appearance of the work but its overall structure and the order of the individual steps.” Despite the rigidity of her process, Herczeg's pieces reflect freedom and even spontaneity as the threads drape from the wood.

 



 

 

Panda Art

Panda Bear by Abstractmusiq (a Deviant Art pseudonym).

In line with my consistently popular series of articles having to do with individual wild animals and their frequent use as subject content even among artists not specializing in wildlife art, I began to ponder which animal I might highlight next. I quickly came to the conclusion that I'd already done those which were the most popular. I was down to consider snake art. You'd be amazed at what I found, both frightening and really quite beautiful (in their own way). However snakes have a bad public relations problem, so instead I decided on pandas, which seem to have the opposite problem--too popular for their own good--"aww, how cute." You'd be surprised at what I found here too; most such art being so cute as to be trite.

A Chinese Red Panda by an indecipherable artist.

As you probably know, I tend to steer clear of the cute, cartoonish, or logo-looking "clip art." Very often that's why such animal art appears trite. Instead, I look for art which stands apart from the rest, even in the crowded field of "cute and cuddly." Abstractmusiq's Panda Bear (top) is a good ex-ample, despite the totally generic title. Marion Voicu (left) and the artist who created the eye-catching red panda (above) chose the lesser-known branch of the panda family tree which is not just smaller in size, but more importantly, more colorful.

Red Panda by

Marian Voicu

 

 

 

 

 

Photo of a Quinling Panda.

For those who might be wondering at this point if the red panda is more raccoon than bear, you're not alone. For decades geneticists have pondered the same question. They do, indeed look more like raccoons than panda bears and were once thought to be more related to skunks, weasels, and raccoons than bears. They're about the size of a common housecat. However, more recent exam-ination indicates they have a genetic family of their own which split from the Giant Panda family some two to three million years ago. A comparison of their ranges (below) suggests they're not prone to "family reunions." While the red panda bears only a slight resemblance to the more popular Giant Panda, there is, in fact, a third branch of the Panda family, the Quinling Panda (above, left). They're about the same size and have similar markings of the Giant Panda, except their fur colors are a shade of light brown and a sort of dirty white. They're relatively rare in the wild and apparently even more so where artists are concerned. It's a fur color combination artists appear not to care much for. I could find few (if any) paintings of this creature.

Pandas do not adjust well to extreme temperatures. Also, being relatively solitary (especially the red panda) their numbers and natural habitat have shrunk in recent years.

The panda and its favorite
meal. They devour pro-
digious quantities of bam-
boo, but can only digest
the leaves.

Inasmuch as the Giant Panda has become something of a symbol for the Chinese govern-ment, art, and other Sino organizations, perhaps we should give precedence to the manner in which Chinese artists have rendered this cuddly big guy (right).



Like all bears, pandas can
also be ferocious.

Despite what virtually all artists (Chinese or otherwise) depict, not all pandas are cute and cuddly. While primarily herbivores, when attacked, or protecting her young, the Giant Panda can make itself a force to be reckoned with (above, left). So if you should encounter one in the wild, ask politely to share its bamboo, and watch where you step; some 90% of what a panda eats is almost immediately passed through its digestive system (they can't digest cellulose). Pollyanna Pickering's pandas (below) seem in the sharing mood. Notice that her watercolor is painted over a subtle background texture of Chinese characters.

 

"Please pass the bamboo, mom," as seen by the recently deceased British artist, Pollyanna Pickering.



For those wishing to paint their first panda, the chart below features simplified pandas in virtually every possible pose. In painting them yourself, try for the unusual, avoiding a cartoonish rendering. God knows there are plenty of those on the internet; just cut and paste. Like all animals, pandas lend them-selves well to watercolors. See if you can do as well as Arti Chauhan (right).

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pansy the Panda, 

Arti Chauhan

Dancing pandas anyone?
 

And for the "aww, how cute" crowd, check out the baby red pandas below.