For 200,000 year Homo Sapiens roamed the vast wildernesses of our planet, eating whatever edible flora and fauna they could find and sleeping wherever they could safely rest their heads. Then one day, around twelve thousand years ago, a few people decided to plant seeds in the soil below their feet. From these tiny pips grew crops which needed to be constantly tilled, fertilised, and harvested. It was a daily routine which meant that these people had to leave their hunter gatherer lifestyle behind and stay in the same place.
As these early farmsteads grew, so did the need for other services, such as armies to keep out potential invaders, records to document the movement of goods and services and the construction of a variety of religious, political, and social buildings. Of course, the preponderance of the population had to keep farming. Indeed, it would take the Industrial Revolution in the eighteenth century and the Green Revolution of the twentieth century, before the majority of the world’s population were able to move away from agriculture and perform other tasks. Yet the point here is that the surplus of food made available by farming allowed, at least for a small percentage of the population, to do other things other than simply gather nutrients to survive; whether it was soldiering, administering or, most importantly for our story here – stonemasonry.
Italy is renowned for being a historical place; a relic of the Renaissance, which to many is the birthplace of art itself – but why do we still think of it in such a way? What about it ignites our imagination? After all, the people who were alive there during the fifteenth century are all long gone; the embroidery of the age has since disintegrated and the customs that once existed there have disappeared with the passage of time. So, why then do places, whether it be Florence in Italy or Machu Picchu in Peru, remind us of a bygone era? Well, that is because, as Ben shows us through his artworks, of the structures the stonemasons left behind.
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‘I was obsessed with cars and the coolest thing to draw was a Ferrari as super detailed as I could, even if it took like three hours to do the front grill, as it was just really therapeutic’ Ben tells me, discussing his childhood fascination with art. ‘I studied art throughout my teenage years at GSCE and A-Level. All my work was in pen and pencil, mainly because I liked those mediums but also because I was quite scared of colour and paint. By using pens and pencil however, I was able to focus a lot on detail and during my studies I began to try and create city scenes as detailed as possible’. ‘From the age of eighteen I had a massive break from art, and it was not until covid came along that I found myself with more free time. I decided to use the paper that I had lying around to start sketching buildings and since then I have continued to draw parts of cities and buildings,’ Ben adds.
Once people discover something that they innately enjoy and receive fulfilment from, the desire to carry out the task and the positive feelings that they experience whilst doing it never seem to fade. (Over the past two years growing Art Etc. I must admit that I have faced a few hardships, and I was told multiple times in the early days to give it up. Yet, as Orson Welles once said when discussing his passion for films, ‘I cannot change this condition of love, but I might be better off without it’. Indeed, I love writing and the Arts and whilst I may have, at times, been better off materially doing something else - my passion makes me who I am).
In that regard, you could say that if you receive the same level of intense happiness from performing a certain activity, even if many years have passed since you last engaged in such pursuits , then the subject is no longer simply an interest but a passion. Yet what is interesting is that Ben not only returned to art but to the same themes and styles.
‘You can still see that obsession with detail that you had in childhood evident in your works today’ I say to Ben. ‘I don’t think I could ever lose it’ he replies. ‘Though now I tend to ask myself “how can I show a lot of detail without spending like a million hours on a window?”’ He laughs. ‘So I focus more on freehand and being less precise. It was a style that started in covid, when I would get the tiniest pen I could find and do the craziest little details but this just got so stressful. I mean one incorrect line and the whole drawing was wrong. So now I just stick some music on and just draw one big line freehand – it is fine if it is a bit wobbly – as I find this more expressive’.
Ben’s transition from realism to expressionism also came from wanting to inject the places he was drawing with a certain level of ‘energy’, as he says: ‘I was always drawn to the same stuff when it came to viewing other artworks and I asked myself “well, why do I love this?” And it was the artists who could do loads of detail but who included in their works a kind of vibe that made me want to visit the place they were portraying. Their drawings were not just photorealistic representations, which was what I was always trying to do because I always thought “well if it looks exactly as it is supposed to then that is good art”. But I realised that it was really cool when someone drew something that maybe had the completely wrong proportions or shapes. It made you want to go there because it had such an energy’.
As humans, one way we obtain energy is via mental stimulation. We like puzzles and gain a great deal of satisfaction from solving them. So, when Ben provides not so much a realistic depiction of somewhere but leaves hints as to where that place is, it energises the viewer’s experience. It makes them shout, to paraphrase many of the comments on Ben’s recent Instagram posts - ‘I know where that is!’
As we discussed in Mark Beresford’s article, a place is often defined by its identifiable landmarks, such as the Statue of Liberty in New York. In that sense, to emphasise such buildings, Ben mixes maximalism with minimalism. As can be seen within many of his recent works for instance, he will add extreme detail to the main building whilst leaving out many aspects of the surrounding areas. It is a style which also enables him to create a scene and provides him with another way through which to inject energy into the piece. ‘One thing I am conscious of doing now is trying to capture the buzz of the place… so sometimes I will surround the building I am looking to capture with minimalist figures and structures’ he tells me.
Yet Ben also demonstrates here that you do not necessarily need to include the entire structure to make the building recognisable. His depiction of the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence for example, is not only expressive but minimalistic. For he expresses not the whole structure but the Cathedral’s most recognisable element – its orange roof.
On that note, the more expressive and minimalistic Ben’s style has become, the more colour he has included within his works. ‘I think it is just really human to just love colour. When we walk past something, what catches our eye more than the detail is the colour, especially if it is blue or yellow. On one of my pieces for example, I used a light blue for a shadow rather than black or white, because it just made it more eye-catching. I also try to look for the ‘wow factors’ in the building and emphasise those elements, like the arches of one of the squares in Barcelona I drew’. Whilst we may now better understand Ben’s style and its shift overtime from maximalist realism to more expressive, colourful, minimalism, we have not addressed the elephants in his works, nor have we explained the reason for their arrival.
These marvellous mammals I refer to, metaphorically of course, are the buildings in Ben’s artworks. For whilst his style may have altered over the years, Ben’s fascination with historical structures, his primary theme, is still imbued within each and every one of his works. ‘I am not too far from London, and I love history [the subject Ben studied in university], which the city is great for. The place is like a complete mess; you have this one-thousand-year-old church next to this glass office block, which is then next to some crazy monument, but I love that. I was also lucky growing up to travel around Europe a lot with my parents. Though, if I had to choose one country to draw forever it would be Italy, not only because of the history but the vibe and energy the place gives out’.
‘My dad has also always worked in building projects, so whenever we went to a famous building, he would forever be saying things like “oh look at that!” So, I was subconsciously brought up thinking “oh look at that roof” or “oh look at this arch”’ Ben tells me. ‘The building that first really grabbed my attention and is still my favourite now is St. Pauls Cathedral. Though in the likes of Naples I am really drawn to the streets more so than just the buildings alone’. In terms of his current techniques however, how does Ben draw these kinds of pieces?
‘I like to use quite nice paper, but a cheap sketchpad is fine too. I then ask myself how detailed the work is going to be and if I need a ruler. My rule I give myself with a ruler is that I can only use it with pencil for underneath the main subject… I do this because I find the ruler less fun and expressive. So instead of thinking ‘oh let’s just scribble a person down there and put a shadow in’ you are thinking ‘oh I have to watch this 1mm here and this half a mm there’. I mean you might as well be drawing an architectural plan if you go into that much detail. Of course, there’s loads of amazing people out there who draw like that, but I just find it more relaxing and artistic now to be a bit more expressive’. Indeed, it is this mixture of highly detailed buildings, depicted using rulers and tiny nibs, imbued with, and surrounded by hints of expression, minimalism, and colour that, in my opinion, provide Ben’s works with his unique signature style; and presents mankind’s stonemasonry in a whole new way.
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