Stinking, rotting, rubbish is proving an inspiration to Darvish Fakhr and Jim Seal.

The decaying bin bags are bringing out the creative side of the pair who are using their skills to show Brighton and Hove's rubbish situation stinks.

Kemp Town artist Darvish is having a field day capturing the smelly garbage on canvas, while pensioner Mr Seal has been moved to verse by the refuse cluttering the basement of his Hollingbury flats.

Darvish, 31, was already making a name as a rubbish painter with his large pictures of differing styles of garbage.

Now, with the increasing amount of black plastic bags around his studio, he no longer has to pick up interesting bits of rubbish for his works of art and bring them into his studio off Upper Bedford Street.

All he has to do is take his paints and easel to a street corner and he automatically has his subject.

He said: "I see rubbish as a statement of our society. There is so much humanity in rubbish. What people throw out reflects their lifestyle and what they think about life.

"A pile of rubbish can take on the dignity of the human spirit, the humour, the kindness that is in us all."

His recent paintings include rubbish in Wentworth Street, Kemp Town, burger boxes on a corner of St James's Street, and bottles propped against the doorway of a property in Upper Bedford Street.

He said: "While I was painting in Wentworth Street, binmen came to collect the pile I was painting. I asked them if they could leave it.

"They said they could providing I got rid of it afterwards, which I did and took it to the local tip.

Pensioner Jim Seal, 67, was so fed-up with the pile of rotting rubbish in the basement of his flats at Laburnum Grove, Hollingbury, that he penned a poem. It reads: "Is this a mountain of rubbish I see/photographed Sunday just after three.

"They said 'we'll collect it before the weekend./Well, we're still waiting. Can I phone a friend?

"My camera's not wide enough to get it all in/but the smell's all around even miles from the bin."

Mr Seal's poem did the trick after it was put up on the noticeboard of the flats. The rubbish was collected yesterday.

Darvish intends to hold an exhibition of his paintings as part of next Year's Brighton Festival.

Darvish has set up his own website: www.darvish. com