An artist I’ve met a few times known as Mason Storm, well in his words: “After 10 years of nefarious activities and stalking I have managed to capture the illusive Banksy at work, face on and will reveal him in a new oil, hopefully finished by Sept. Dont rant it’s high time the mystery was revealed.”
Worryingly for Mason, Banksy apparently knows he has been captured on camera by him and artist friends are advising him to play it careful… LOL.

Mason is going to do an 6ft high oil painting of Banksy from the photo he took. Apparently someone has already tried to buy the painting before he’s even started it properly, but refused to sell it (as they insisted on him not reproducing the painting).
He’s also running a sort of competition to help spread the word: “a few choice prezzies for whom so ever prints of one of my ‘mason Knows’ mini posters and gets it in either the furthest location from London, the cheekiest location and 20 others for special merit”, his group on Flickr here is for the competition.
He’s gotta hope that Banksy doesn’t beat him to the scoop by revealing himself before he’s finished the huge painting…

Mason’s main form of artwork has been seriously intricate anti-imperialist sculptures. He also does oil paintings in photo-realist detail, a painting he did of Carravaggio’s Last Supper scene infused with Mc Donalds’ products can be seen here.
His online shop is here.

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Recently a couple of Banksy’s London pieces have been defaced. A few weeks ago a graffiti artist 101Foot wrote a message over one of Banksy’s better known pieces (above image), near Old Street tube, London. It’s message states “SAY NO TO ART FAGS”. While this statement reflects an increasingly heard opinion in the UK street art scene (still perhaps not justifying the defacing of a popular piece of art), the more recent defacing is a little less intelligible, and is just a shame. Banksy only put this piece up a couple of weeks ago (N Hackney, near Old Street) and was apparently his first in London for over a year.
It does beg the inevitable question of whether Banksy is still as respected and revered by us London/UK folk. The answer i think is mixed, the defacing by 101Foot definitely represents a slowly growing sentiment amongst some street/graffiti artists. It’s less about Banksy though and more about how street art almost/has been totally commercialized by the mainstream art galleries and pundits globally. Amongst all this, the reality of some of the now recognized ’street artists’ backgrounds being not so ’street’ has taken some of the credibility out of it all. Many graffiti artists have being doing their thing for 15-20 years, and some ‘recognized’ artists promoted by mainstream galleries are almost fresh out of art college….
In Brazil, under a year ago, a respected art gallery was rushed by a street gang during it’s opening night. The gang sprayed their tags over all of the “street art” prints that were on sale, apparently because they took offense to the artist claiming “street”. Could this happen in London soon??? Would be fun to see, and perhaps welcomed by a few hardcore artists.
As an artist I reference graffiti in my drawings, and I know I need to careful not to mislead others about what kind of artist I am.
Politics….

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