Local artist’s storied career leads him to E.B. arts show

Local artist’s storied career leads him to E.B. arts show

JEFF GRANIT Harold Shull of Milton Avenue in East Brunswick, who became a freelance artist after a career in art design and direction, is one of more than 100 artists featured in Saturday’s Visual Arts Celebration.

Harold Shull among

more than 100 artists

to be featured Saturday

By jamie dougher

Staff Writer

EAST BRUNSWICK — Among the myriad of artists from several states who will be featured in Saturday’s East Brunswick Visual Arts Celebration, attendees will find at least one who is proud to proclaim his status as a township native.

Attendees won’t have trouble picking him out, since his table will feature a sign reading, "East Brunswick’s Very Own Harold Shull." Prospective buyers, he said, might be inclined to purchase art from someone who has lived in East Brunswick for the past 26 years and, furthermore, uses its residents as models.

Saturday’s fine art and craft show, which runs from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the East Brunswick Municipal Complex, Cranbury Road and Ryders Lane, will feature more than 100 artists from New Jersey, New York, Connecticut and Pennsylvania who will exhibit their works and offer them for sale. The event takes place in the 17-acre park surrounding the municipal pond. Rain date for the event is Sunday.

Shull has had a diversified career. He worked as a political and sports cartoonist for the Baltimore News American. As a commercial artist, he has designed toy package covers and internal sketches of the human body for a pharmaceutical company.

In the 1970s, Shull spent nine years doing work on the yearbooks for the New York Yankees.

For the last two years, Shull has worked for Everbind Books. Everbind is purchasing the rights to 36 classic novels and assigned Shull to design covers, and find models and paint them in scenes from each of the books. He has completed work for eight of the novels and recently finished painting a scene from Arthur Miller’s The Crucible.

To find East Brunswick residents, including some local high school students, for use as models, Shull travels to malls looking for subjects who appear similar to certain characters from novels. He is now looking for a girl to represent Daisy Buchanan from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and a man to portray a scene from Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea.

"Finding models is a very difficult thing to do," Shull said. He said he brings a portfolio and business cards to ensure his potential models of his credibility.

"People are very nice and really willing to do something like [modeling]," he said. "I’m building up a list of models."

In his career, Shull has made the transition from cartooning to portraiture to painting depictions of wildlife.

"It was the thing to do," he said. "It’s inside the genes. I answered what I wanted to do and right now I want to paint wildlife."

He also has delved into the computer age in the last 10 years, becoming proficient in computer-aided design and art. Shull said the work that used to take him two weeks when done by hand now takes an afternoon.

"It’s unbelievable when I look at the amount of work I turn out."

Shull said he was speaking with another artist about how some artists have defining elements in their work separating their art from other pieces.

"I never chose that route," he said. "Clients and companies knew I was the dependent one."

Shull had a family to raise and said he decided to work as a commercial artist and have a stable income rather than to try and become famous for his art.

"Instead of saying I’m successful, I’d say I’m a survivor," he said.

Shull’s most popular piece is a work designed by computer called, "Beethoven’s Sanctuary."

Another popular piece is titled "A Cool Drink," which features leopards. Both can be viewed on his Web site, www.haroldshull.com.

"My paintings range from portraits to wildlife to flowers," he said. "Every painting I do I try to do something different."

He first exhibited his personal works in April at the Shad Festival in Lambertville, where he sold four or five pieces of artwork.

Shull noted however that his work already has been exhibited to people who see his art on thousands of toy package covers and in cartoons.