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.

Had to post this. Who said graffiti is ugly - I guess this kind of scene would be a dividing line between people who can sense the creative energy, culture, and colour that graffiti can bring and those who can’t stand it… I think it’s almost beautiful.
Found the image from a great site that is constantly updated with people saving interesting images, quite a good source for inspiration. The site is FFFound.com

This is a collaboration piece with THE KRAH. The KRAH is a greek born international street artist. He has recently been included in many street art publications & a book on Greek street art (see right image).
See the piece itself below (framed & detail). Details: “All City”, JRM & THE KRAH, 2010, ballpoint + pens + spray paint on card, 110 x 88cm (framed), 75 x 55cm (unframed), for sale (contact for price).
This is undoubtably the first of it’s kind. Combining ballpoint photo-realism and street art style work in spray paints and pens.
I’m responsible for the buildings (done in ballpoint), obviously KRAH’s responsible for the colour madness. It is mounted and framed in solid oak. More info and a video of this piece after the image below…

The piece is for sale, if you are in London and would like a viewing, don’t hesitate to ask.
There is a short video on YouTube of this piece, see below for an embedded version.
We have just released a limited edition of 50, sized A1 (about 59 x 84 cm), numbered & signed giclee (highest quality digital) prints available at £400. International delivery available, to order one of these prints, use the below button (Paypal) or contact.

Gallery 90 opened this week, located near Arsenal Tube Station (London N5), specializing in UK Urban art. Most of the art is by stencil artists such as farkfk, snub, stickee etc. Prints & originals & some sculpture. The work is at affordable prices and the gallery people are cool. Went to their opening “live paint” session, where many of the artists were doing their work on whatever you brought along. One lucky guy had his van completely painted by 4 of the artists.

There was a great street art show on Cots Lane, near Bethnal Green, E. London. It was a little out the way, and you wouldn’t exactly stumble across it if you were having a walk in the area but over 2,000 people turned up for the opening on Thursday night.

I missed the opening, but went along on Saturday (the show has now been broken down). There was some seriously great work there, and lots of it.
This one (left) is a huge painting by The Busk, who I have done a couple of small collaboration artworks with recently. This painting is about 150 x 150cm.

I actually bought a piece of art. Funny, as I have been creating art for over 15 years, selling for 10, but this was the first piece I have ever bought. It is by The Krah, some work of his here. After contacting The Krah since, I hope to be doing a little collaboration with him soon…

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….

Recently done a couple of drawings, using Busk to do his tag on the drawings. Busk is a very active UK/London graffiti artist. He’s just done an interview with UKadapta (UK urban culture web magazine). They’ve got him down as an UK Graffiti Pioneer, so, look for him into the future.
Below are the two drawings of mine during my solo show which feature his tag in (click to enlarge), hope to do some more collaboration work with him in time.