goddardandharlech asked: Hi Ben, really love your work. Kind of stumbled upon it randomly as my mate reblogged one of your pieces. are you currently exhibiting your work or is a case of finding them scattered about london? Joe
Cheers dude. No shows planned a such at present, hopefully be plenty more walls painted in town over the next few months
Emo
Fashion Street
London
2012
This is a painting of my house mate ‘Emo’ that I finished up a couple of weeks ago. Reasonably happy with it, far from my best but the location is spot on and it just makes me laugh seeing Mo’s ugly mug up on the walls ;)
Spiralling into self doubt….again
Mixed medium on canvas
60cm X 60cm
I was recently in Paris for a show and obviously used the opportunity to have a paint. I had planned to paint 2 pieces, but this piece turned out to be a bit of a bitch to paint as it was mainly on glass.
I have never painted on glass before and I won’t be rushing back to it any time soon.
I am happy with how it came out but it was certainly the trickiest piece I have painted, the ink just would not dry.
Ah well, you live and learn and all considering it turned out preety good in the end.
Was good fun to finally have a paint with David Shillinglaw too. We had been talking about it for a while and glad we did. I’m a big fan of his work and I find this an interesting collaboration. Unfortunately I had to leave before he had finished his part so there were a few facebook messages back and forth but he did a great job in the end, looking forward to having a proper paint with the man soon enough hopefully
Shout out to Paris Freewalls and the guys at Thgallery for letting us paint there shop up, great guys and hopefully going to be working on some Tshirts with them pretty soon.
Collab with @davidshillinglaw for him to finish tomorrow in Paris whilst I get the train home :( (Taken with instagram)
Image courtesy of Shafiur Rahman
With my latest street piece, I returned to the wall on Hanbury street which I first painted around this time back in 2010. That piece was one of the first ‘proper’ street pieces I ever painted. It was of a Bengali mother and child. The image was chosen to relate to the local Bengali community who thankfully embraced the piece. I felt that with this next piece, I wanted to challenge people (and myself) a little more.
This time I wanted to deal with something at the complete opposite end of the spectrum but still very much related to the local community. I had a very clear idea of what this piece was meant to represent when I started it, and to be honest, I thought it would be very obvious from the outset. However, I was shocked (and also delighted) with the variety of responses and reactions I received.
My idea behind the painting was to show two characters as different sides of the same evil. On the left you have a portrait of a member of the EDL (The English Defence League) and on the other, that of an Islamic extremist. I have been very interested by such characters for a while. As a portrait painter they were interesting in terms of the expressions and shapes, but as a human being, I always struggle with the stories behind such portraits and that they are captured out of such hatred and contempt for another human being.
My point is simply that these two people represent the same thing - that of intolerance, racism and hatred. A very unfortunate but very real side of society that has become far too apparent of late. They see those who do not conform to their views as the enemy, and they preach hatred. They project themselves as different from the other but to the majority of people they represent the exact same thing.
I thought I would have trouble getting this painting done. I think it would be fair to say that I under-estimated the tolerance of people. Except for a couple of snide comments, I received nothing but positive responses. The majority of people completely understood what I was trying to say and backed what I was doing. Most people, whatever ethnicity or nationality they may be have no time for the types of people I was painting and I can not tell you how happy it made me to hear this. The beautiful thing is that that these extreme individuals are a minority and long may it stay that way!
As with the majority of my street work now, it is important for me to say something with what I am painting. Be that representing someone I admire or appreciate, or in this case highlighting a particular point. As much as I am a painter, I am also a massive fan of street art, but I feel that not enough artists are using their privileged platform to full effect. I am all for stuff that looks great and is aesthetically pleasing, but for me it is also important to say something once in a while, get people thinking rather than simply admiring the beauty of something.
Done for the night. Off for a curry then head done in the couch for the night (Taken with instagram)
