Natural adventures

6229. Upfest 2024 (44)

Sophie Long, Upfest 2024, North Street, Bristol, May 2024

Sophie Long is an incredible wildlife artist, who blends accuracy of the subject creature with a soft artistic impression to create utterly outstanding murals and artworks that are uniquely hers. This Upfest piece, in a little annex (Ebeneezer Pocket Park) on North Street is a perfect example of what I am trying to describe.

Sophie has a penchant for painting bees, and manages to represent their character without anthropomorphising, which is a real skill. This is a special wall that has played host to numerous wonderful pieces over the years, and this one comfortably stands among them. A perfect Upfest piece from Sophie.

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6228. Upfest 2024 (43)

Ant Carver, Upfest 2024, North Street, Bristol, July 2024

I am always touched when I say hello to artists, and they recognise me from brief snatches of conversations at previous festivals. This is the third year i a row that I have stopped to chat with Ant Carver, and in common with most artists I meet, he is a genuinely lovely bloke who will always make time to talk for a bit. At this year’s festival, he was running a little behind schedule, so I didn’t occupy his time too much.

Ant Carver, Upfest 2024, North Street, Bristol, May 2024

Ant Carver has done a terrific job with an awkward spot, which is quite hard to see from street level, unless you stand some distance away. The flat roof, and restricted access to it, meant that, apart from inquisitive souls like me, Ant Carver was pretty much left alone to get on with his split piece.

I was wondering what was going on with this interesting juxtaposition and found this explanation on the artist’s Instagram feed: “Lately I’ve been looking at the way we consume news and media and the conflict between intense and light imagery”. Ant Carver has demonstrated this perfectly in this piece, with the treat of the snarling dog, and the stoic partial portrait. Great work from Ant Carver.

6227. Upfest 2024 (42)

Rob Lee, Upfest 2024, West Street, Bristol, July 2024

Some murals can only really work at scale, and this is one of them. The relatively simple design by Rob Lee becomes something utterly awesome when plastered on the side of an entire building. I don’t think that visitors to the occupiers of the building would have any difficulty in finding the address… “err, it’s the one with the big pink, yellow, green, blue and lilac stripes on it – you can’t miss it”.

Rob Lee, Upfest 2024, West Street, Bristol, May 2024

Although the design might be reasonably straightforward, there is a lot of technical subtlety in it, especially with the transition of shades of colour marking the bends in the stripes. The piece would be somewhat bland without the rippling of the stripes and the depth it gives the whole piece. Painting the colours on a black background is a master-stroke, and rounds things off perfectly.

I have come across a piece by Rob Lee once before, last autumn in Sheffield, and some of you might remember the post. I like the Sheffield piece, but this Upfest one definitely trumps it!

6226. Upfest 2024 (41)

Hazard, Upfest 2024, North Street, Bristol, May 2024

Just like many other communities, the Bristol artist community is in a constant state of flux, with many new artists moving to the city as others move out. One of the most significant recent departures has been that of Hazard, who I believe has moved to the North of England, possibly to Leeds. This is a huge loss for Bristol, but her connections with the city mean that she will return from time to time, I am sure, like she did to paint this beauty for Upfest 2024.

The portrait piece with its patchwork of coloured shapes slightly underplays her brilliance – perhaps it is the slightly awkward spot, or the dark tones she has used, but it doesn’t leap out at you like many of her pieces do. It is a piece that you need to stop and look at and admire, but all too often people simply stroll by, focussed on their phone screens. I definitely miss Hazard’s regular interventions, but that makes each of her appearances now even more precious.

6225. Dean Lane skate park (736)

Zake and Face 1st, Dean Lane, Bristol, July 2024

I’ll let you into a small and rather unimportant secret… I wrote this post yesterday because today I am going to visit Cheltenham tomorrow for the Cheltenham Paint Festival, which this year has an extraordinary line up, so expect some rather nice posts in about 2-3 weeks time. I am so pleased for Dice67, AKA Andy Davies, who has been running the festival since its inception, which is just becoming bigger and bigger with each year.

This is a rather nice collaboration from PWA duo Zake and Face 1st in the narrow bit between a building and a skate ramp, hence the rather odd angle in the top photograph. Zake has painted a character yelling, painted with as much relief and texture as it is possible to get.

Face 1st has painted his name in rather fetching reds and pinks with some interesting cross-hatching in the ‘c’ and in the hair of the laughing girl. I like the way that Face 1st has been experimenting with his writing a lot lately, although I miss his full body character pieces – I guess you can’t have it all!

6224. Cumberland Basin

Ments, Cumberland Basin, Bristol, July 2024

This piece from Ments, painted as part of a wider paint jam, is a joy to behold. I am always going on about how we just don’t see enough of Ments’ work these days, and here is the second piece since May, the other being at Upfest. There is no doubt that Ments has pulled out all the stops with this one.

His characteristic ‘organic’ writing is full of mystery and shapes and textures of planet earth, like chemistry mixed up with geometry and art – a delightful combination. From what we see, there is no way of knowing what the letters spell, but it is probably a good guess to imagine that it says MENTS. There is so much to admire in the intricate details and interactions between the forms and colours in the piece. Outstanding.

6223. Dean Lane skate park (735)

Recently I have managed to miss out on a couple of Hire pieces, because I have just been too slow, and for some reason, his work has been getting overpainted quite quickly lately. I think it is bad timing on his part more than anything more sinister than that. So I was particularly pleased to catch this one.

I have been an enormous fan of Hire’s since the first pieces I saw, many years ago. He consistently turns out brilliant graffiti writing and occasional rabbits to such a high level of precision. In this piece he has used the willing combination of pink and blue to create his HIRE lettering, but what I particularly like here is the interaction between the letters and the brown background, which is impacted by, and augments the letter shapes. Very nice work from Hire.

6222. Cumberland Basin.

The Art of Sok and Smak, Cumberland Basin, Bristol, July 2024

In the seventies I might have described this piece as ‘smashing’, and as a child of the seventies I am going to describe this outstanding collaboration between The Art of Sok and Smak as smashing. I was lucky enough to meet with and chat to both artists the night before they painted this wall as part of a larger jam, at Merny’s exhibition opening, which had a great turnout.

The two artists have worked together perfectly to produce this character/writing combination. Smak’s writing is absolutely sensational and in addition to that, he has created a perfect tropical sunset backdrop with The Art of Sok’s character presented in the foreground – beautifully comnposed.

The Art of Sok, Cumberland Basin, Bristol, July 2024

During his short trip to Bristol, The Art of Sok, who it turns out is a lovely bloke, dropped a few pieces about the place which I will naturally post in due course. The cartoon-style character is pretty much perfect in its precision, which is how The Art of Sok rolls. He told me that he likes to get his finished pieces to resemble as closely as possible his draft, so it is all very much worked out in advance, and he has the skills to execute his plan to the letter. This is an excellent collaboration.

6221. M32 Spot (189)

This is the second piece by Nuke to appear on Natural Adventures, although it was the first to be painted, in chronological order, of the two. I’m not too sure if the two pieces were a one (two)-off and left during a visit to the city, or whether we can expect more to follow. I suspect the former.

His work, even though I have only seen the two pieces, is instantly recognisable in the delivery of a character/writing combination that has a haunting and slightly dark vibe about it. There is a blending between the ghostly portrait and the wildstyle letters, that works really well, and the colours reflect upwards from the base, and the white light is projected from the top left. Very nicely done.

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