Ben Eine
Street art, unlike graffiti, adds to the environment and is a positive experience for the artist and community.Collection: Positive
The whole world is covered in graffiti. No one cares. It's just part of urban noise.
I started off tagging stuff - I'm not meant to be having tea and biscuits with the prime minister.
In certain places around the world, street art is widely accepted and it is part of the urban environment.
I haven't studied art and I haven't studied typography, but I've still gone out and done it.
One of the advantages of not going to art school is that you're not taught what you can't do.
When I started working at Pictures On Walls, I'd been hanging out with Banksy for a few years travelling around the world together painting stuff, and then we moved into a new office and wanted to do screenprinting.
Old typography or letter woodblocks that are hand-carved, cracked, and worn are especially beautiful. I love that aged, handmade effect, and that's why I don't muck around much with Photoshop.
When I first got into graffiti I thought it was going to change the world. But when, 20-years-later, it still hadn't, I got bored of the self-imposed rules.
I don't want to sell to street art collectors, I want to sell to art collectors.
I did long-term re-insurance claims. Asbestos, health hazards, pollution. It was very boring. But I've got quite a mathematical brain and it paid well.
Banksy's a very selfish, driven, paranoid artist. For good reasons.
I'm a bit too old for anarchy. If I was younger I might be more political but I'm married with kids and I've got a mortgage.
I have never voted in any election - I usually have more important things to do, especially since I've had kids.
I got a message from Downing Street that my picture's hanging in the White House. Which is weird.
My work isn't overtly political, although it is sometimes painted in places where I don't have permission to paint, so that could be construed as a political statement.
My friends were stealing cars and shoplifting. I was never into that but I was cheeky. I enjoyed making people laugh.
I remember finding this book, which showed a New York subway train that had been covered in so much graffiti you couldn't recognise it was a train. I thought, 'I want to do that... how do you do that?'
It's hard to live just by selling paintings.
You just have to be clever about who you work with. Had I done Gap or H&M, there's no way Louis Vuitton would have wanted to work with me. So you hold out for the big ones.
Whenever I get a job that's somewhere around America, I fly over my ex-wife and daughter and hang out with them.
I used to run away from the cops and now I stand and chat with them about my art. I'm older now and it is harder to run away from them. It would be embarrassing for an older man to get arrested by someone half your age. So I gave up running.
When I got into graffiti, it was the most-exciting art form and it changed the course of my life.
Street art belongs on the street. But I'm a working street artist and I earn my money selling art in the style of street art via galleries.
I don't get paid for what I do in public places. So I invest the money I earn in galleries back into doing the stuff I passionately want to do on the street.
You can't be a punk all your life.
I'm not a massive artist by any stretch of the imagination. Yes, I've been in papers and magazines, but you never have any idea if anyone actually reads it or pays any attention.
Whenever I go anywhere in the world to do a show I try to paint something in the street as well.
The art that I do is for the people. It is about engaging a new audience who wouldn't necessarily go to art galleries and museums and painting on the street is the best way to do that.
My philosophy through all my work, be it on canvas or on the street, is about pushing boundaries and not going with the flow because everyone else is doing something a certain way.
Most people think I do street art, so I do everything for nothing. I'm an urchin who paints walls and does work for nothing. That's the first misconception about street artists, that we just paint for nothing.
I'm a luxury brand.
A friend of mine back in 1989 did an illegal rave in Vauxhall. He got Keith Haring to come along and tag the side of the wall. My friend cut it out of the wall and he kept it under his bed for 20 years. Then a few years ago he asks me if I want to buy it... so I spent £12,000 on a Keith Haring.
The Prime Minister gave President Obama one of my artworks and suddenly my name was all over the news.
Anyone can lose their home and find their life is turned upside down.
I respect Virgin Atlantic's brave and challenging attitude and the way it goes against the grain, so I jumped at the chance to be part of the first ever Gallery in the Air.
David Cameron has given one of my paintings to President Obama. It's quite mad, really. But it's OK. It's not the kind of recognition I seek or get every day, but Cameron seems quite a positive kind of guy and Obama's a dude. I would probably have had issues if it had been for Bush.
A lot of my paintings have quite negative meanings, but painted in a bright and cheerful way.
For me, it's mostly about having stuff on the street. You're walking down the street, you do it every day, and suddenly there's something that wasn't there yesterday: something bright and cheerful and different. It might stay there for a year; maybe it will disappear.
Spraypainting a shop shutter turns an ugly, boring thing into something interesting and colourful. I think you'd have to be a pretty negative person to find fault in it.
I was brought up in south London and I started out in the world of graffiti when I was about 14 because I wanted to be part of that hooded tracksuit gang thing.
Street artists want to add something to the environment. They consider the audience, whereas graffiti writers don't care about anyone except themselves, they do it purely for the kick.
An airplane cabin isn't the first place people think of when they choose an exhibition space, but I'm all for doing things differently.
It makes me really proud to be able to use my art to spread positive messages around the world.
When I can, I enjoy working with local people to involve everyone in the community in changing their environment.
I'm always travelling and spend a lot of time in airports so I know what it feels like to get a personal welcome home. I wish I got more of them.
I'm hoping that Abu Dhabi's first piece of street art will inspire the next generation of artists the same way that the discovery of subway art inspired me all those years ago.
I'm a long way from being a Damien Hirst.
I love to paint and beautify the most unexpected of places - I've painted everything from doorways to trains but have always wanted to do something really huge and different.
Painting on the ground was a cool challenge because you can't just stand back and see what you're doing.