Find LGBTQ+ friends

Join 100,000 members. Events, friends, dates, networking, and more.

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

New family dog / fruit bat is so sweet it’s painful. Instant love. 🥰
This is how I sit in 🇫🇷
Anthony Cudahy ‘Arthur Russell on the shore’ 2023
Adam Baker ‘Amber Hours’ 2025 This artist has an exhibition upcoming in London (Beers Gallery, Farringdon). Opens 25/09.
Busy night of self expression
Anyone else like a weird succulent? This is Euphorbia medusa. She’s all snakey but look at those cute little blooms, what a lovely display.
First painting in oil. Instantly obsessed, what a joy to work with. Definitely need better ventilation in my study though 🥴
Beautiful fluid dynamics in the clouds over London today. Bumped the contrast to bring out the structures. So pretty!
🐿️ 🌼 🌼🌼
Stop for the red light A rose, at every time Demands to be seen
Keith Vaughn Small Assembly of Figures 1951 Keith Vaughn was a fascinating figure - I recently read a book with annotated excerpts of his diaries and it is incredibly moving account of a troubled life. I still think about it often.
John Latham Man Caught Up with a Yellow Object, 1954 A fragmented figure seems to emerge from a haze. It could suggest deep anxieties, which were widespread in the 1950s, about alienation and the pointlessness of individual action. However, Latham saw the yellow object as a symbol of enlightenment
Crop from Bridget Riley’s ‘Fall’, 1963. Tate Britain. Is it moving in reality? Have a guess 😵‍💫
Following the last post re: getting deep. A gentle first question for the community, in two parts. 1. What is your earliest memory centred on food? 2. How does it make you feel to think about that memory now?
Making deeper connections in life requires us to be genuinely curious about other people. Pretty obvious, right? But how often do you approach the people in your life with something deeper than surface level small talk? What are the things we’re afraid of, that prevent us from getting deep? Is it the fear of being judged or rejected if we show too much of our true selves, or do we worry that others might find us insubstantial on closer inspection? We need to rid ourselves of these and other fears. Life is short and precious and we all deserve to be seen in all our glory and our insecurity with love. So consider this a PSA - if you’re feeling disconnected and craving authentic connection, ask more questions of the people in your life and encourage it of others. It doesn’t need to be an interrogation, it can be deep and fun or serious, emotional even. All it requires of you is imagination, understanding, respect and to try letting go of your fears about how it might go. I’m going to ask someone questions to the community, feel free to try them out in your offline life. ❤️
Watercolour work from 2024, no title as of yet but I have some thoughts. Always interested to hear others’ ideas so don’t be shy!
First prom of the year and it was a beauty. Great view from the galleries but a bit too far from the action so back to the pit next time.
First day of The Artist’s Way. 3 pages of thoughts with no filter - it was tough. Lots of issues to unpack, maybe a bit too much self-indulgent wallowing but I guess that’s to be expected for day one. Three months of this daily exercise should help clear the pipes and allow me to pull something useful out of myself. I just want to be more the driver, less the passenger. More active, less passive. I don’t want to hide from all the things that scare me. I wrote about how I’d like to be numb sometimes and immediately wrote about how guilty I felt for even thinking that, then that I should be more kind to myself, then that being too kind to myself is the source of the inaction that is frustrating me. Self-therapy in real time? I don’t know, but I feel some knots are at least being untied and I can try to knit the threads into something better.
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...]
How cool! 🦊
You can run but you can’t hide, 2024 Watercolour media on paper
London sunset 1/2

Ben is on Collective

See more in the app

Get Collective ›