It was while he was completing this piece that I met Slakarts for the first time, and then the following week in the same place I met him again, both while he was painting collaborations with Nugmoose and Mudra. There three appear to have formed a tight group, and I look forward to many more collaborative walls from them.
Slakarts, Dean Lane, Bristol, February 2021
Slakarts is developing and evolving this character all the time with each iteration bringing together themes he has been working on, such as the doubling of some features and the addition of glasses with reflective stripes on them. Thoroughly fun to observe and Slakarts seems to derive a lot of happiness from his work. All good.
Readers of Natural Adventures will be familiar with cat pieces by Daz Cat, but I think this is the first Time I have posted anything by Sage. I actually got lucky because I met the pair for the first time when they were painting this rather nice collaboration. Such nice people… and like policemen and doctors and teachers, so young.
Daz Cat, M32 cycle path, Bristol, March 2021
Daz Cat told me that he was using up dregs for this piece, not that you’d know it. This cat is full of colour and detail and the three-quarter profile has given Daz Cat some different perspectives to play with.
Sage, M32 cycle path, Bristol, March 2021
Sage, I think is responsible for some interesting mega tags that I have seen about the place without knowing who they were by. This, of course, is a bit of writing and I think he likes to do writing and characters in equal measure. I need to find and write about more pieces from Sage.
When I visit the M32 roundabout, I usually stop for a few moments and take a look at the River Frome as it escapes its culvert and meanders towards the city centre before entering another culvert. This is a magical stretch of river and an oasis for wildlife slap bang alongside the M32 motorway. It was while I was photographing this new piece from Kool Hand that I spotted a kingfisher darting out of the tunnel and along the course of the river. It made my day… actually it made my week.
Kool Hand, M32 roundabout, Bristol, March 2021
In a way I have Kool Hand to thank for this brush with nature, because If I hadn’t been photographing this piece at exactly the right time, I would have missed the bird. This is a wonderful throw up from Kool Hand featuring his trademark orangutan face with a baseball cap. A good day.
One of the real privileges of the last year or so has been to witness the emergence of so many new street artists in Bristol, and even more exciting is that roughly half of them are female and are absolutely smashing it. There almost seems to be a new school of female artists loosely linked and bringing their own particular colourful blend of art. Exciting times.
Tao.Create, Frome side, Bristol, February 2021
One of these artists is Tao.create whose beautiful trapeze artist is still adorning one of the columns at the M32 Spot. This looks like a practice piece to me although it is difficult to say. Tao.create seems to love the body form and has a great skill for portraying movement. Equally clever is the absence of facial features which helps to focus our gaze on the whole body shape. I love the understated nature and location of this piece. I can’t wait to see more.
It is a great pity that Epok is a rare visitor to Bristol these days, preferring to paint in Gloucestershire, where I presume he must live. The upshot of this is that each of his pieces in the city is very precious, like this one as part of an ASK collaboration from a while back.
Epok, Brunel Way, Bristol, February 2021
This wall is a nightmare to photograph due to the amount of glare streaming in from the left hand side. Even on overcast days it is tricky. This is a spectacular geometric piece from Epok, combining his straight lines and angles with circles and semi-circles, spelling out EPOK. Although part of a five-way collaboration, this section of the wall was shared by Epok and painting pal Piro who combined styles and colour schemes. Good to see a new Epok piece in town.
This recent piece from Nugmoose caused a bit of a stir, because it is really different and unusual and by an artist that we don’t see painting the streets too often. This is actually part of a collaboration with friends Slakarts and Mudra. These three have formed a rather nice partnership and were out painting again a week later on the other Dean Lane long wall. I stopped on both occasions to chat with the artists, and Nugmoose is a lovely bloke who told me he is quite interested in painting alien encounters and ideas, hence the strange hieroglyphs to the left of the piece.
Nugmoose, Dean Lane, Bristol, February 2021
The colours are so unusual and really help to make this portrait stand out. The lines are clean and simple but the impact very big. Every artist I have shown this piece to have immediately responded with saying how good it is, but you don’t have to take their word for it… take mine.
Tom Miller is an artist I have taken a great deal of interest in ever since I first encountered his unusual surreal pieces in Stokes Croft and in The Bearpit back in 2016. At that time he was still studying his craft at the university, but it was clear that he was creating something rather special. Some of his work is captured in this gallery.
Tom Miller, New Stadium Road, Bristol, February 2021
What is most pleasing is that he is now getting a number of commissions and his artwork is appearing on large walls around the city, but he is keeping it real by continuing with his street art work too. This magnificent piece on one of the most prominent walls in Bristol took him a couple of weeks to paint and during that time I stopped to catch up with him.
Tom Miller, New Stadium Road, Bristol, February 2021
Tom is genuinely one of the nicest artists I know, he is so modest and always seems to enjoy a bit of a chat. I have to say that I was concerned for his safety when he was painting this, because it was incredibly windy and the scaffold tower was wobbling much more than would have been comfortable. He survived though and what an amazing job he did.
Tom Miller, New Stadium Road, Bristol, February 2021
This piece, as you would expect, is so full of colour and detail. Some might call it busy, but I would call it expressive. Lots of body parts combined with flowers and other familiar shapes and objects fill the space, and then there is some respite from this crowded scene to the right of the piece with two less frenetic panels.
Tom Miller, New Stadium Road, Bristol, February 2021
The focal point is the face in the middle, and I wonder if it might be a subconscious nod to a piece that stood here for a few years of a large portrait of a girl with a yellow face.
Tom Miller, New Stadium Road, Bristol, February 2021
As I said, the two panels on the right offer something different from the rest of the piece, with some landscape and cosmos to calm things down a bot. The far right section reminds me a little bit of the Pink Floyd record sleeve of ‘Dark Side of the Moon. This epic wall is a great addition to Bristol’s iconic street art culture and is one that people leaving the city on the M32 can’t fail to see.
Natural adventures 