Two wicker baskets
filled with childhood adventures
it’s hard to let go.
by Scooj
Author: scooj
I am Stephen. I live in Bristol, UK. I decided to shorten my profile...to this: Wildlife, haiku, travel, streetart, psychogeography and my family. Not necessarily in that order.
2554. Midland Road
Obvs this is a piece by Mr Penfold and what a grand piece it is too. This large design that presents five bold patterns separated by jaggedy white lines is typical of his his more recent work. I say more recent, but I should add that this picture was taken in x 2018.
When writing this post, I used StreetView to remind myself of the street name, and was surprised to find that this piece has grown considerably in size and now occupies the facade of the building to the right as well. Watch this space for an update… one day.
The blue plaque, on what is now the ‘To The Moon’ bar and cafe, is a memorial to John Wright or ‘John the Caff’ as he was known locally. His obituary in The Guardian from July 2009 can be found here.
Thursday doors – 7 November 2019
Doors 88 – Cheltenham doors (Part 1)
At the end of September I went to visit Cheltenham, not too far from Bristol, for the Cheltenham Paint Festival, something I have wanted to do for a year or two now.
Never one to waste a bit of a doorscursion, I managed to snap a few doors while wandering around the town looking for street art spots. I actually went twice and over the two days walked more than 30 kilometers, mainly because I am not at all familiar with the town and also because unlike at Upfest (Bristol’s street art festival) the art is really spread out in all corners of Cheltenham. This meant I got to see quite a wir=de selection of doors.
This first post is just a random selection and I’m not sure I could remember where any of these actually were, but you can forgive me I hope, my mind was on other things:
Well that’s another canter through a few Cheltenham doors – I hope to line some more up soon.
Meanwhile, please go take a look at the Norm 2.0 blog – the originator of Thursday Doors where there are links to yet more doors in the comments section at the end.
by Scooj
2553. Dean Lane skate park (262)
One of the things I love about going through my archives is that I get to re-visit a whole bunch of gems that for one reason or another I didn’t publish at the time – often because I operate with a monumental backlog. I reckon that for every piece I post on Natural Adventures there must be five or six that never see the light of day.
This overlooked and yet utterly wonderful piece is by Slakarts and was painted in Dean Lane back in January last year. His trademark stylised faces are always recognisable and he seems to favour a soft or gentle colour palette. This face has been adorned with plenty of little decorations and some nice painted drips. More in my archives to come.
Discretion took flight
.
No longer outraged
bought-in to the narrative
seems anything goes
.
by Scooj
2552. Cheltenham 2019 (18)
Being so close to Bristol, the Cheltenham Paint Festival is crowded with artists that I am really familiar with, who make the short journey up the M5 or on the train. This is a lovely piece called ‘I Hear You’ by Stephen Quick which according to his Twitter feed is a call to arms to all the unheard voices now being heard.
Stephen Quick’s pieces historically used to be complex stencils, but more recently he has taken to painting freehand in a stencil style. He uses a brilliant mash-up approach to his work combining film or TV elements and to illustrate this here are his #hashtags for this piece on social media:
Streetart, urbanart, portrait, power, woman, superhero, shera, teenagemutantninjaturtles, mural, cheltenhampaintfestival, cheltenham, painting, art, artofinstagram, spraypaint, acrylicpainting, stencilart.
A really fine piece. Bravo.
2551. Cheltenham 2019 (17)
A beautiful and understated little stencil piece by M-one that for me pretty much stole the show at the Cheltenham Paint Festival this year. I haven’t come across the artist before but I believe he lives in Southsea.
What is so clever about this stencil is not only the placement and the illusion that the hole is a real one, but that the rust colour he has used kind of blends in with the rusty drips on the tiles behind. I’m not sure if this was his only piece at the festival or if there is another one somewhere in my archive. I’ll find out soon enough. Brilliant piece.
Chicken pie
Procrastination
has become an art form here
must get on and cook.
by Scooj
Silent Hobo
A gallery of magnificent character work from Bristol’s Silent Hobo
All photographs taken by Scooj
2550. Cheltenham 2019 (16)
One of the first pieces to be completed at this year’s Cheltenham Paint Festival was this homage to Nadiya Hussain, the Great British Bake Off winner and now celebrity chef, by RJ77 who I believe might be quite local but I’m not sure why I think that.
RJ77 has stuck well to the theme of the festival and his book is Nadiya Hussain’s ‘Time to Eat’ cookery book. He is a very talented stencil artist and this greyscale piece looks like it has maybe eight or nine layers – gotta love those drips too. He painted a lovely piece at Upfest 2018 which I posted a little while back. I’d love to see more of his stuff, but might have to wait for more festivals to see it.
Natural adventures 