Ben Eine

  
    Ben Flynn most commonly known as Ben Eine is a street artist based in London, he is most notable for his alphabet lettering in the streets of London.

Eine says that what originally inspired him to become a graffiti artist was when he first laid eyes on a New York City subway car transformed into a canvas for a graffiti masterpiece. He also says that crews in the Bronx began tagging “wild style” graffiti on trains he credits them for launching his career as an artist. Eine says this about photographs of paint on the sides of trains: “you could show these to people and they didn't look like trains until you noticed the wheels on the bottom of the carriage. It was one of the craziest, most insane things I’ve ever seen. I kind of made it my mission to do that.”

The core essence of graffiti to Ben Eine is the study and stretching of letters. Eine got really frustrated with graffiti because his long hard work kept on being covered up and so it eventually got boring. He considers graffiti to be about exploring the form of letters, the form of words, how letters can change when put next to other letters – just wrenching, moulding and stretching letters as far as you can.

Ben Eine has worked with many other street artists, most notably Banksy. They met in a bar in London and Eine still remembers how some of his street artist friends used to make fun of Banksy for using stencils. They then became really good friends and began collaborating, travelling to Palestine, Australia, Berlin and elsewhere.

According to Ben Eine street art is not made to last, he says when he was younger he painted plenty of pieces and almost everything he has ever painted on the streets has been covered up or cleaned up at some point.

    

     In my opinion Ben Eine does have great ideas and the way he thinks is unique and interesting just like Banksy he believes that art shouldn't be sold but told. I personally don’t think his art is really that interesting, I find it quite boring to do alphabet letters because I don’t see a story/message or anything interesting behind it, I don’t hate or dislike his work I just don’t mind it.