Best Ever

Best Ever Interview

Best Ever have an anatomical and surgical way of looking at human figures. Their concepts cover death and disease and how fragile the human body is and how weak we all are as forms. The duo come from graffiti backgrounds with both being equally proficient in the style of photorealism. This allows their collaborative efforts to seem effortless, as they seem to be able to work on one canvas, sharing one mind between them. They both seem to agree on the fact that a lot of representations of the human body make it look really beautiful. Their goal is to challenge this notion and convey the message that the body isn’t really that attractive and humans aren’t that nice to look at....

- Lets start with the basic introduction stuff. Tell us where you guys come from and what you do.

H: I’m Hadley and I’m from Bournemouth. I started doing graffiti there and that evolved to doing what im doing now. I then met Neil and whilst working together, we decided to create Best Ever.

N: We’ve been painting for about 15 years now and I started in the 54 crew, doing straight up, commercial photorealism pieces. I then bumped into Hadley in Bournemouth who mentioned that we should try working together. It turned out that we actually have very similar ideas. So we started collaborating on some work and we liked how it turned out. This was just over a year ago.

- Wow, so Best Ever is quite a fresh collaborative effort! What were you doing before then? College? Working?

H: I’m currently studying Fine Art at the moment and before I was at college, drawing and painting all the time. I also had a horrible part-time job, working at a factory.

N: Before I met Hadley, I was making a living doing commercial commissions, doing municipal projects with photorealism. For example, a new restaurant might want a tiger painted on their wall, so I would paint the tiger from a photograph. It was really unrewarding work and I felt that I had fallen into a real rut artistically; something that Hadley managed to pull me out of.

- But you guys have known each other for a long time before Best Ever?

H: We knew each other from the Bournemouth writing scene as it is quite a small place. After I started to adopt a looser painting style within photorealism, I decided to contact Neil again and was confident that we’d work well as a team.

- So before, it was just straight up graffiti?

N: Yes definitely. Personally, I gave up on letter painting a long time before, which was a pretty bad move, creatively speaking, because all I would do is literally just photorealism pieces.

Hadley saw my potential to do a lot more than just that and inspired me to try and be more creative again.

- For the uninitiated, how would you describe your collective style, as I can see more than just the photorealism element in your works.

H: I think it’s an anatomical and surgical way of looking at human figures. It’s mainly about death and disease. I like painting the things that you don’t see in a human but we know they are there; different angles, bones, blood and cells; even working out calculations that occur by just keeping a body alive.

N: How fragile the human body is and how weak we all are as forms.

H: Yeah, it’s amazing how fast a body can decay through disease taking over.

N: I remember when we first started painting, one thing you said that we wanted to come across in our work and both really agreed on, was that a lot of representations of the human body make it look really beautiful. We wanted to challenge this notion and say that the body isn’t really that beautiful and humans aren’t that nice to look at.

- In terms of the way you guys work together, who does what part of the process? There are different elements to each piece, so who does what part?

H: Normally I will start by throwing some paint at the wall and begin to make lines and angles in a very loose style. From there on, we never know who is going to work on what part. It really varies from piece to piece, in terms of who does the photorealism part, who does the loose sketch part. Some canvases have more input by me and other parts have more input from Neil.

N: A lot of times it will start from a really loose idea and then Hadley might lay down some ideas in his sketch book and then we will add more and more realism elements. Our work always evolves and you can never tell from the initial sketch what the final outcome will be.

- Do you use extra materials (like bits of card, masking tape & special caps for your tins etc) to get the job done or is it purely with just a spraycan?

N: I find that if you want to work on the medium of canvas, in order to achieve that effect and quality, you have to use any means necessary to get the job done. Any tools, in my opinion, are fine to use because it is more about the outcome than the process of painting. If you get into that ideal that you can’t use a bit of card or skinny cap, then it will have a negative effect on your finished piece. When you are painting things like eyes on a small canvas, it’s impossible to not use other bits and pieces to help you achieve that effect.

- Are there any contemporary photorealistic painters that you currently rate or draw inspiration from?

N: We’d be foolish not to mention Herakut at this stage. We get a lot of parallels with them and there have been a lot of negative statements, saying that we are biting their style. We tend not to pay too much attention to these kinds of comments. Technically-speaking, they work extremely well together as a duo, with Akut’s photorealistic style and Hera’s sketchy style blending really well.

H: Yeah, I would say that our techniques are similar, but in the same way a stencil artists techniques are similar or any painter using a brush but our ideas ,colours, concepts, compositions are completely different. But for me I draw more inspiration from artists like Blu or JR for the sheer scale that they work at.

N: Blu’s work is great because of its simplicity and the directness of the message that he is trying to get across.

A lot of streetartists have something to say with their work and it is normally done in such an obvious fashion, but Blu has this way of visualizing his ideas and message which is so clever.

- Tell us about the Bournemouth graff scene. It seems that places like Bristol are very proud of their town and their writers. Is it the same in your town?

H: There are a lot of talented writers who do come out of Bournemouth but at the moment, there aren’t really any places left to paint and so there isn’t really a scene. There used to be a couple halls of fame that have now been knocked down to make way for blocks of flats.

N: I think that the council deliberately went on a mission to destroy illegal graffiti in any capacity. In the space of 6 months, 3 really decent places to paint were destroyed. Since then, nobody new has really come up in the past 2 years. 

- What direction do you see yourselves going in the near future? All artists have an evolution; do you see yourselves going in any particular direction?

N: In the past year we have been perfecting our work on a really small scale and we would really love to do some massive scale projects.

We have a couple contacts in Berlin who might be able to hook us up in the next year or so. 

H: I want us to do things that make some form of history in the art world because they are so big! I just really want to blow people away with our painting. 

- Any future projects that you are allowed to tell us about?

H: We have a solo show coming up in London next year, a group show in Tokyo with you guys (Adapta Gallery) and a show in November in London. The more we can take on right now, the better. We are going to be here for the longhaul and we want to be able to live purely on our artistic skills, because we don't have much else that we can do! 

- You guys are young, up and coming artists; can you give any words of advice to anybody who is thinking in trying to start making a career from their art?

N: It will feel really strange to do at first, but really try to only paint what comes from within you. Don't try and pander to someone else's market. It's a mistake that we have made in the past and I think that it's really important to learn from it. Don't paint what you think might sell, as it can show through in your work. Generally, people can recognise integrity and know when you are being honest. The truth will always win in the end....

Website : www.wearebestever.co.uk

Written by Selph