Ben Johnston 'Good Things Coming' Print Available

Artist: Ben Johnston
Title: Good Things Coming
Medium: Giclee Print
Size: 40 x 40 Inches
Edition: 10
Price: $750 CAD

 Ben Johnston is a Toronto based multidisciplinary artist who has turned painted words into three dimensional events. Born in Canada and raised in South Africa, he trained as a graphic designer before committing full-time to muralism; that foundation still drives the meticulous kerning, hand-drawn serifs, and forced-perspective shadows that make his letters appear to levitate off brick, canvas, or polished steel. Using layered acrylics, spray paint, and an airbrush he adopted only recently, Johnston stretches, fractures, and slots language until a simple imperative “RISE,” “ORDER/CHAOS,” “LOOK ON THE BRIGHT SIDE” becomes an optical puzzle that shifts meaning with the viewer’s stance.

Major public pieces include a five-storey mural for Toronto’s Stackt market and the 2019 Muralfest award-winner in Hamilton, while his 2023 sculpture show Wordplay at Taglialatella Gallery translated his typographic vocabulary into rotating aluminum tubes and ambiguous steel glyphs that resolve into text only when circled.

Johnston’s practice is equal parts designer rigor and street-art immediacy: preliminary vector maps are projected at dawn, color-matched to digital swatches, then painted freehand before the city wakes, preserving the spontaneity graffiti demands without sacrificing the polished finish advertising expects. The result is work that functions simultaneously as commercial communication, civic landmark, and fine-art object proof that a single well-built sentence can compete with the visual noise of an entire city block.