Written by Matt Moore, it was published with photos of six Einz trains in Club International adult mag.

You want real art? Forget your sheep in formaldehyde, says Matt Moore, and take a look at graffiti...

"We sit at a station for hours on end waiting for our train to come in so we can get daylight photographs of the piece we did the night before. And we'll sit there all night looking at a train yard clocking it out before we paint it, We do spot trains - but for a completely different reason to train spotters."

Einz is 25 years old. He isn't really called Einz, but since the British Transport Police are after him I'll refer to him in this article by his tag (graffiti moniker), Einz. Originally getting involved in graffiti during the mid-80's Hip-Hop explosion, Einz started painting because he couldn't rap or breakdance. Now ten years later, with a child, mortgage and a job at a bank, Einz risks (if caught & convicted) the threat of prison, heavy fines and losing his job every time he paints.

Come on down so-called dangerous artist, Damen Hirst, with your big house, pop star mates and well kept lawn. "The only thing they risk is their next pay packet," says Einz. "Graffiti writers have died doing a train. A friend of a friend was doing old cars in Neasden and they got raided by the Old Bill. The Old Bill chased them and they all legged it down the tracks and tried to climb up this embankment, slipped and fell on the third rail. He was electrocuted." The third rail provides the current that drives the train.

The art that Einz practises is graffiti and true to his art's definition is always illegal. "Legal graffiti is not graffiti," insists Einz. "There is graffiti and there is aerosol art. All these people who paint walls and paint at graffiti exhibitions are not doing graffiti, they're doing aerosol art. That's something different although they take their style from graffiti."

From an art point of view, if you look at artists today compared to artists if old, the artists now are famous and making money in their own lifetime - so they obviously do art to make money, it's a job. "Van Gogh and all those other people years ago, they did art because they loved art - they weren't interested in making money. That's exactly how I feel."

It's Saturday night and along with Einz's long-time graffiti friend Flowers and their respective girlfriends, Bobby and Emma, we've gatecrashed a Japanese bird's room at a posh hotel and we're drinking all the booze. Taking a drag from a dirty spliff, Einz elaborates. "Any bastard can paint a canvas, all you have to do is be reasonable at art," he says. "To paint a train you have to be dedicated to the cause and really want to do it because you're risking your house, you're life, going to prison - all those things just to paint a train."

How do you actually go about painting a train? "We'll hear about a yard that we would like to paint. It suits our needs, like there's platforms so you can do whole carriages easily without taking ladders. You'll go there about 11 o'clock as the trains are dying down. You'll walk around a yard, find out how to get in, find out where the cool bit is to paint and basically spend the whole night here. You'll be there from eleven till six in the morning painting the train." "When I put my piece of graffiti on a train, that train turns into my train as long as that piece is on it. When I'm standing at Edgeware Road tube station waiting to get photographs - it's my train. " A full colour piece of work on the side of a carriage can use over thirty cans of paint, with the cost of a good quality can of paint at a tenner. Add to that the fact that the piece of work will only last for a few days (trains are cleaned immediately) and it doesn't take a genius to work out that graffiti art obviously isn't done for money. Unlike Damen Hirst and his fucking pickled sheep.

How do you afford the paint? "I steal it. There's no way I would ever buy a can of paint to do graffiti. Always have, always will. The best time to nick stuff is in winter when everybody is wearing jackets. Pop the lid off, make sure there isn't a security tag and put it in your pocket. It's a doodle." Since graffiti has been going strong in this country for over ten years, many shops that stock paint are continually improving their security to combat the amount of paint that graffiti artists are collectively trying to steal. As the popular shops try to clamp down, many determined artists drive around the entire country spreading out their raids so they can get the amount of paint they need to work.

"Every now and again I'll take two weeks off work and travel to Germany on the coach." says Einz. "On foot in a week, if there's a couple of you, you can get four hundred cans between you. Come back to London, drop them off and go back to Germany and repeat the process. Germany has the best paint in the world."

During the late 80's and early 90's, 'train jams' or 'train parties' were an exciting and much talked about fixture on the London graffiti scene. Originally organised by music-loving graffiti atists before they went to clubs later that night, a group of twenty or thirty people would meet outside a pre-designated station on the Circle Line. "Everyone would go down, jump over the barriers, no-one pays. Get on the Circle Line, ride a few stops until the people in your carriage fucked off. Smash out the lights, and as soon as that happens everyone goes mad and starts bashing the shit out of the carriage, windows and roof. You bash one carriage, everyone runs through to the next carriage and does the same there." The twenty or thirty people soon swelled to over sixty people. Armed with huge stereos, spliff, beer and an endless artillery of paint and marker pens, the train jams on London's Circle Line quickly became notorious. And in the eyes of the police, spivs of the establishment, a riot. " Once we went around the Circle Line - it was sweet. All of a sudden we're pulling into Great Portland Street station and everyone is going fucking mad. We get to the Barbican and we get off, and this guy we are with has the keys to the PA system at the station. He holds up the stereo to the microphone and plays Fuck The Police by NWA through the whole system!"

At the start of the 90's, in reaction to the IRA's increased presence in the capital, security and surveillance on the Underground upped ten-fold. This marked the end of the train jams, since British Transport police could easily spot sixty people trying to gather inconspicuously on a platform.

Einz recalls his last train jam. "The train stopped in the tunnel and stayed there for nearly half an hour. We knew we were getting raided, so everyone threw their paint out the window and dispersed throughout the whole train. We all sat down and tried to look normal. We pull into South Kensington station and the whole platform is lined with Old Bill. There were no doors open except for one at the front and the Old Bill came through and started dragging everyone off who looked like a graffiti writer. All the writers dressed like writers - baggy jeans, shell toes, lumberjack shirts but I took the liberty of wearing a suit. So as we get raided, I pull a book out of my pocket and sit down. There's no way I dress like a graffiti wirter. It makes sense, it gets the job done."

In 1995 Einz is low-key and has a small circle of friends that share his burning enthusiasm for the art. His main influences that affect his work's content and style are music (he loves Oasis), fashion (he loves Vivienne Westwood) and films (he loves Star Wars). He's also got a girlfiend, a kid and a job - three things that most of the ginger-haired upstarts that think they're "stoopid, fresh and dope" usually haven't got. "I've got this thing," says Einz. "Don't do the crime unless you're prepared to pay the price for doing it. I would not do an armed blag because I'm not prepared to do a five year stretch, where as I'm prepared to go to prison for doing graffiti because I love it. I've been doing graffiti for 10 years. If I got nicked, the most I would get is six months - and I'd probably only do three months. That's just over a week for every year I've been enjoying myself." Einz's girlfriend, Bobby - now really drunk - interjects, "Lovers that have an edge are better than lovers who just think they're good together in bed."