Ben (@justben) • Collective gay friends app

Ben @justben

Thoughtful arty type in South London. Practicing painting, kindness, piano, gratitude... Looking for creative, genuine people... my tribe.

Hypnotic 😵‍💫

Desperately wish to live here and sun myself in that tower every day or watch the rain. Where my genies at?

The floodgates are open. It feels good to be working again. There is still self-reflection to be done and I’m committed to it; I know myself well enough to understand this is just backed up crap after unclogging a drain and I need to work on the system to keep the flow going.

Finally broke through the block and managed to make something.

Detail from ‘Return from fishing’ by Joaquim Sorolla, 1893. Musée D’Orsay, Paris. I just love Sorolla’s way with light, it’s delicious, especially the interplay with water. This is only the second painting I’ve seen of his in the ‘flesh’ and I have to say they shine so much more in person.

Cute cactus flower as I have no work to show. I’ve been in a creative slump for most of the year. I’m feeling inspired by art, love to see other people’s work and I hope it will spur me on. But it doesn’t translate into wanting to sit and create. Cont...

Nasty but beautiful opuntia Kew Gardens

How my night is going

Untitled Wax/oil pastel on paper, 2025

Untitled but a sequel to the previous work... Wax/oil pastel on paper, 2025

Untitled, 2025 Wax/oil pastels on paper

This one I'm calling ‘Hekla’.🌋 2025, Wax/oil pastels on paper

Having a bit of a lull since my last 'big/serious' work but trying to find some joy by experimenting with new materials and ways of working. I will share recent works I've made using hybrid wax/oil crayons. It is freeing to work with speed like this, trying to keep everything loose and carefree. ♥️

Athens ♥️♥️♥️

Perhaps my favourite thing about English springtime - the woodland bluebell carpets. # Kew Gardens - don't miss it if you can get there soon.

Any Hoya lovers? This one is H.Carmelae. Delicate burgundy peduncles with a perfumed toffee scent and little syrup offerings for the polinators (tastes nice too 🫣)

Correa Backhauseana AKA Australian 'fuschia' ❤️ the little yellow bells, way classier than genuine fuschia imo.

Vatnajökul Acrylic on board, 2023 The second of my Iceland paintings. In my mind I was going to add a third, larger painting to complete the set but I never got around to deciding what the subject would be and now my style is too different and I'd have to try to emulate myself. IDK... 🤷🏻‍♂️

Fossálar Acrylic on board, 2023 One of two small paintings I made after my trip to Iceland in 2022. I suppose my work has become a lot more organic in the last three years and the edges have worn off the geometry that remains, but I enjoyed this style for landscape very much - I may revisit it.

An unexpected delivery, 2024 Watercolour media on paper A very raw painting from a dark place, but one that that has generated so many ideas for directions in which I could take my work. I’m always torn between the tight geometric works which appease my anxiety with neat [cont...]

You can run but you can’t hide, 2024 Watercolour media on paper

London sunset 1/2

All beneath the sun, 2024 Watercolours on paper

The Rift, 2024 Watercolour media on paper

Self portrait in red, blue and gold

Flux, 2024 Watercolour media on paper

From the Edvard Munch exhibition at the NPG. This is probably the most psychological of the works on show, and the only one that really made me feel anything. Munch is one of my all time favourites so I’m quite disappointed at the choice of works on show. Where’s the psychodrama?!

Under the skin, 2024 Watercolour media on paper

The other English breakfast. Tea with milk Crumpets; one marmite, one marmalade It’s a 10.

It hailed today in London but it’s all good 🙃

Maddening in action, 2024 Watercolour media on paper

Spring is coming

John Craxton, R.A. (1922-2009) Shepherds near Knossos, 1947 I love everything about this; the palette, the abstract textures in the rocks, the carefree Greek men and those goats nibbling the barren tree. It is just so evocative. Definitely a painting I’d have in my dream collection.

HYANGMOK BAIK (b.1990) Country Roads , 2025 Baik is a queer Korean artist, based in Seoul. I love his poetic naïf style with themes of loss of youth, masculinity, comradeship. If you’re in London he has a small solo show of new work at Beers Gallery in Farringdon.

Give me back those moments, 2024 Watercolour media on yupo paper A piece about loss and grief and guilt.

Beautiful day for a walk around Kew Gardens

... in the dead of night 2024 Watercolour media on yupo paper

Matters of mycology, 2024 Watercolour media on yupo paper