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Blek Le Rat on Richard Hambleton

I first became aware of Hambleton's work in Naples in 1984. He doesn't use spray cans: he uses brushes and black paint in pots to create immense human shadows, which can be up to 250cm tall. His highly stylised mixture of drips, strokes and splashes makes for extremely powerful silhouettes. All his characters emanate an energy that only a grand artist can create. Canadian-born Hambleton – notorious for 30 years now, having worked in cities all over the world – often paints his shadowmen in rather dark, if not rotten, places such as car parks: hidden nooks and crannies where they can surprise passersby.

Hambleton, who now lives in New York, is the only painter whose work I have ever bought. But money and fame are not his priority. His ambition is to show and to share art in the urban landscape.

Blek Le Rat is a stencil art pioneer who works in Paris.

The Faile collective on Bäst

We first came across Bäst's work on the streets of Manhattan in 1998. There was something so alive about his art, and the fact that he worked in a variety of media, that really set it apart. Bäst's combinations and appropriation of pop culture were refreshing and raw. Older pieces such as Molotov Dwarf – a man with the head of a Disney dwarf, holding a molotov cocktail – pre-dated Banksy's Flower Thrower and instilled the same kind of emotional contrast through image-pairing. He has an ability to deconstruct mass media in a way that is dirty and violent, yet beautiful and sincere.

His studio work has evolved in an equally compelling direction. Botulism, at London's Lazarides Gallery last year, featured collages of images and advertising, giving the impression of an ever-expanding, media-driven bacteria. The relationship between street and studio is important: Bäst is just as energetic at 2am in an alleyway as he is on the wall of a gallery.

Faile is a New York street art collective, formed in 1999.