Words by Melissa Williams

Ben Horton is a skateboarder, graphic designer, skateboard company owner, family man, nature lover and artist who lives in California, USA. His creative work is innovative and inspirational, a power-punch of visual beauty, environmental consciousness and freedom.

Horton’s development as an artist within the ‘skateboard industry’ was as free, natural and survivalist as the flow and art of skateboarding and the universe itself. Since his childhood, Horton has been fascinated with nature, as he recalls: ‘My earliest memories are of volcano drawings. For some reason, I was fixed on drawing brown volcanoes with red lava bursting out the top. I’ve always been fascinated with nature. But as a child I preferred drawing cars and I always thought animals were impossible to draw. Like it was the next level of drawing or something. As I got older though, I figured out some things about animal anatomy, which helped a lot.’ 

In 1984, Horton got his first skateboard from the G&S skateshop in La Mesa, California. It was a Neil Blender, Coffee Break model, ‘It later got stolen out of a bush I stashed it in on the way to school. I think the single most influential aspect of skateboarding and the graphics for me was that there were no rules. Or at least it seemed to be that way.’

Even though Horton loved skateboard graphics and the freedom that came with skateboarding, at the time he didn’t know anything about skateboard artists. Most of his favourite graphics at the time came from Santa Cruz Skateboards and therefore more than likely the great artist, Jim Phillips [see MyNameIs? Issue 3]. A few years on, around 1989, Horton started picking up on the art that came on boards like Black Label and SMA. With no internet to access at that time and libraries being about as exciting as a kick in the teeth to a young skateboarder, Horton had little classic art knowledge at his disposal, apart from the Da Vinci, Dali and Escher books in his home. 

Technical art information was also a little hard to come buy and even though Horton did take standard art classes in High School, most of what he knows and does is entirely self-taught, ‘I took some drawing and painting night classes at a nearby community college in 1992. I felt like it was a bit of a waste of time. I did learn that art materials are expensive and that I needed to find out a lot more about art history. I wish I could have gone to a nice school and really have taken the time to learn it all, but that wasn’t realistic. I just couldn’t afford it. So yeah, most of what I’ve learned has been by making mistakes and trying new materials and techniques on my own.’

The FULL interview with BEN HORTON appears in issue 5 of Mynameis? magazine - click here to purchase your copy www.graphotism.com/Subscribe-Graphotism-or-MyNameIs-Magazine.74.0.html