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.
There are a number of artists who have a signature piece or style that through repetition become recognised, and lean towards iconic. Examples in Bristol would include Full Time Ghoul, Mr Underbite and perhaps most famously, Slim Pickings, who writes TES. The visiting Scrapyardspec is one of these artists.
Scrapyardspec, Greenbank, Bristol, May 2025
This is a fine double character piece from Scrapyardspec, looking a little golden in the late afternoon sun. His endearing, wibbly/goofy characters haven’t deviated much from the archetypal form and are beautifully filled with green and yellow colours that match the parched grass verge perfectly. His regular visits to Bristol are more than welcome.
Doors 308 – Copenhagen, Denmark (part VIII), September 2024
I made a mistake last week. Today is not my last post from Copenhagen, it is in fact definitely the penultimate post and next time will be the last one – I promise.
I am getting a little overwhelmed with work and real life distractions, but my blog is my safe space where I can exercise a little mindfulness and calm, for me. I try to make time and space to write every day, and even though some of it is absolute nonsense, it is a great discipline. I say all this, to try and explain my error last week. It is, however, trivial and unimportant.
This week’s doors are from a slightly less affluent area of Copenhagen and is a series of graffiti doors. My knowledge of Danish street/graffiti artists is negligible, so I won’t even try to identify them. I do like the way doors are used in this way, whether it is high-end art or simply tagging, it adds a layer of story to the doors. I hope you enjoy them.
Rex and Bobby door, Estlandsgade, Copenhagen, Denmark, September 2024Heavily tagged doors Viktoriagade, Copenhagen, Denmark, September 2024Tagged steps, entrance and door, Dybbolsgade, Copenhagen, Denmark, September 2024Three sets of doors, Ullerupgade, Copenhagen, Denmark, September 2024Tagged door with a rather nice owl in the middle, Amerikavej, Copenhagen, Denmark, September 2024So much tagging going on with these institution doors, Kapelvej, Copenhagen, Denmark, September 2024Fabulous character painted on basement doors, Kapelvej, Copenhagen, Denmark, September 2024Yellow bird and double doors (I saw a lot of this bird character on my visit), Norrebrogade, Copenhagen, Denmark, September 2024
While I recognise that this selection of doors might not be everyone’s cup of tea, they further illustrate a different aspect of how doors are seen and used. Next time, I will be bidding a fond farewell to the doors of Copenhagen, I hope to see you then.
If you have made it this far, you probably like doors, and you really ought to take a look at the No Facilities blog by Dan Anton who has taken over the hosting of Thursday Doors from Norm 2.0 blog. Links to more doorscursions can be found in the comments section of Dan Anton’s Thursday Doors post.
I have been around the block a few times in my job as a public servant and civil servant, and observed the ‘change lust’ that occupies Ministers, their Special Advisers and organisational seniors. It is a sight to see, where ‘yes men and women’ unquestioningly make change, because ‘change is the new norm’, and who would dare challenge or suggest alternatives.
All Governments and Government Departments do it. It causes disruption, but the surge in activity looks like something is being done, and ‘that’s what the voters want to see’. What the voters don’t see are the inefficiencies of change, the costs of change, and that top-down change rarely results in the outcomes hoped for, but hey ‘at least we were doing something’.
I’m an old cynic. It is my job to question and to call out what I think is wrong. I am no pragmatist or ‘human resource counter’, I am a brilliant employee who has to go through and try to survive another huge change, but survive I will. And all the others who are caught up in this flurry of excitement will move on and take their disruption with them.
This bold piece by Corupt is in the darkest part of the St Werburghs tunnel, and I had to do a little bit of brightness and colour manipulation to bring out the best in these photographs. The tunnel is a great street art/graffiti spot, especially in wet weather, but the light conditions can make photography very challenging at times.
Corupt, St Werburghs, Bristol, April 2025
This is a really beautifully presented Chrome piece, spelling out STICK, set on a pink background, with a fine red line outside the thicker black border, a design element that is a bit of a signature of the artist’s work. There is something rather unusual and appealing about his letter style. Great piece if you can actually see it in the gloom.
There are a couple of things that are slightly unusual about this piece by Fade. The first is that it is a solo piece and not a collaboration with Dibz and second, it has unfamiliar letters, as it is a tribute to ‘the Mrs’ to use Fade’s words, although I can’t remember her name, and I am struggling to decipher the letters.
Fade, Dean Lane, Bristol, April 2025
The graffiti writing is flawless, as you would expect, and stands out on the large wall with a black background. There is a little too much brown for my own personal taste, but I have spoken enough about that in recent posts. Really stand out work from Fade
This piece, by Short, is really easy to miss. It is in one of the tunnels under the M32 roundabout where the lighting is poor, and one’s mind is focussed on not being run down by a bicycle or e-scooter rather than stopping to look at the graffiti writing. If photographing such pieces is hazardous, I can’t imagine what it is like to try and paint in such a confined space.
Short, M32 roundabout, Bristol, April 2025
The black, joined-up letters, spelling SHORT are somewhat augmented, deliberately or otherwise, by the background created by a previous artist’s large chrome letters, which creates the perfect backdrop. I am enjoying the way that Short is popping up in different places around the city, and offering us a type of graffiti writing that is a step up from throw ups, and developing all the time.
It isn’t all that long ago that I wrote about how Bristol, although it has a super-vibrant street art scene, is less well represented on the wheatpaste side of things. Of course, when you say something like that, life has a way of proving you wrong, and I have since found a whole bunch of wheatpastes, many of them by Wilko in the Stokes Croft area.
Wilko, Stokes Croft, Bristol, April 2025
I haven’t come across Wilko before, but I have a feeling he might be from Birmingham. He certainly made the most of his visit to Bristol, and I will try to post more of his wonderful illustrations in due course. This orange and black piece has a feel of African-influenced art and cubism (which of course are related) about it. Great to see.
Mr Penfold and Mul, East Street, Bristol, April 2025
This is a recent picture of a piece that I think was painted during Upfest last year, when Mul was visiting and dropped a few pieces about town. Here he has teamed up with Mr Penfold to create a fun and colourful collaboration.
Mr Penfold and Mul, East Street, Bristol, April 2025
Mul is known for his heart characters with legs and an eye. I’m not sure where Mul calls home, but occasional visits to Bristol are always very welcome. Mr Penfold is perhaps more commonly associated with his abstract commissions on shopfronts, but he intermittently produces these wonderful cartoon characters, presumably for fun. A tidy collaboration.
Now, regular readers will know that brown is my least favourite colour when it comes to graffiti writing, and it is a path I am unlikely to deviate from or be persuaded otherwise, so the selection of brown aside… this is a really nice tight piece by Werm.
Werm, M32 Cycle path, Bristol, April 2025
I rather like this letter style, which while keeping up the symmetry theme that Werm enjoys so much, also has something of a feel of Marvel or DC Comics about it, as if it should say ‘blam’ or ‘whack’ or something like that. Definitely a fun piece, well presented. Pity about the colour.
Natural adventures 