Long Story Short ★ BEN MAURO

How SACRIFICE and PERSISTANCE OF VISION delivers the Unimaginable

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What does determination look like? How does belief play a part in pursuing your vision? Today I’m happy to share an interview I did with Pacific Northwest Concept Artist BEN MAURO. Some of his credits include HALO, ELYSIUM, THE HOBBIT, VALERIAN and even his own comic project, HUXLEY. He’s a hungry, passionate, artist who’s bringing his own ideas to life…by any means necessary.

BTP: Having grown up in Michigan during the 1990s were there any other people around you that were artists or creatives? How do you think the area in which you grew up influenced your work?

MAURO: Growing up in Michigan in the 90s and early 2000s, I didn’t have many people around me who were working artists or creatives in the professional sense. Most of the inspiration came from things I discovered on my own in comics, music, movies, video games, toys and art books I could get my hands on at the local bookstores, library or GameStop at the mall. It felt pretty isolated in that way, but I think that made me hungrier. I had to build my own visual language from scratch, and I obsessed over anything that transported me somewhere else.

Games were a big escape and inspiration for me, especially Halo, MGS, Resident Evil, GTA3, Ocarina of Time and just all the amazing games that came out during the early Xbox, PlayStation and N64 days. That has always been a big constant in my life seeing that artform go from Pong on the old Atari to NES and being there every step of the way seeing the medium advance and evolve since I was a little kid.

The Midwest has this sort of practical, no-nonsense work ethic to it. That rubbed off on me and from my parents, the idea that no one’s going to hand you anything…. you have to grind to make something real. At the same time, there’s a kind of quiet bleakness to the environment, especially in winter’s grey skies, rusted structures around Detroit, that feeling of post-industrial decay. I think that atmosphere really seeped into my creative DNA.

A lot of HUXLEY’s tone with the contrast between vast, empty landscapes and the beauty of old, forgotten machines probably comes from growing up in that kind of environment a little bit. One of the other things that I think helped was I had a lot of time to grow up in nature, explore the woods, build forts and things and develop an imagination in a pre-internet world. With how advanced and connected things are now I feel like this might be harder and harder to do.

BTP: You bring up some good points, Ben. As creatives, when we have nothing, we tend to fill the void with our imaginations. It’s inherent in our nature. Did you start writing and drawing when you were younger or did that come later for you? When did you come to the realization that a creative career was the right path for you and given those hard working pragmatic Midwest sensibilities, was there any support for that path?