A quick one today as I need to get myself sorted for a day of fishing. This is a magnificent pair of characters from Mr Crawls and Mote… the gift that keeps on giving. The piece can be found on the hoardings opposite Temple Meads station.
The trademark chrome background helps to lift the characters and give them prominence. A bird with a hat from Mr Crawls, and a lovesick monster from Mote. What’s not to like about these characters?
I arrived at Bristol Temple Meads station a little early recently, on my way to a football match in London, and had a few minutes to kill in the area around the station and managed tom photograph some pieces that I have been meaning to capture for quite a while, one of which was this monster piece by Mote.
I have given up hunting down Mote pieces, and tend to embrace them as and when I come across them, so sometimes they are already quite old by the time I get to photograph them. This is a rather attractive looking character with the trademark cross lines for pupils in the eyes, a very Mote motif. This whole panel was decorated a while back by various artists, I think to celebrate the Bristol Tattoo Festival.
This fine Mote and Mr Crawls collaboration is at the northern end of Ashton Avenue Bridge, and greets with good humour all who cross it. The pair appear to have gone with a full-on monster theme for this collaboration, combining their styles well.
Once again we see their preferred chrome background, which is a quick and easy way to identify the artists. On the left, Mote’s monster, in pink, has a little bit of Frankenstein’s monster about him, perhaps sub-consciously. On the right, Mr Crawls has gone for the melting face look, a device used by other artists such as Laic217. It works really well with this character piece. All in all, a tidy and fun collaboration.
I took a slightly longer walk away from Brunel Way a few weeks back on a very warm summer’s afternoon. Ashton Avenue (I think that is what it is called) is part of the Metrobus route that joins north and south Bristol without getting clogged up on the main thoroughfares, and is a sleepy track, except for the occasional bus trundling past. The route is peppered with utility boxes, some of which have been decorated by the unstoppable duo, Mote and Mr Crawls. Here are some of them.
I really need to update Mote’s gallery, and I still haven’t actually created one for Mr Crawls yet, which would seem to be something of an oversight. (Note to self – post a Mr Crawls gallery soon). Both artists have been using chrome backgrounds, which I think is a really effective way of framing their character pieces.
These examples really highlight the differences between the artists’ styles, but also the similarities, where a certain amount of cross-influencing has been at work. Mr Crawls has produced several versions of this character wearing some kind of hat, and indeed, hats seem to be quite an important feature in his work.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get to a couple of these pieces before the taggers got to them, but the other two are nice and clean. Here again, Mr Crawls’ character is wearing a hat. His work, in particular, has transitioned quite a lot from when he broke onto the Bristol scene with his gulls, parrots and other birds.
Well worth the extra walk.
I had a lovely evening a couple of weeks ago, visiting the opening of Merny’s art exhibition in Midland Street. Parking in the area was a little troublesome, so I parked a bit of a distance away, but used the opportunity to visit a little graffiti hotspot that I don’t go to all that often. I was rewarded with finding this Mote/Mr Crawls collaboration tucked away on a wall in Jubilee street.
I think that this piece might be a few months old, because I haven’t seen Mr Crawls’ skeleton-neck bird for some time, although the paintwork does look pretty fresh. This pairing has endured really well and brought the best out of both artists, which is great to see. They also tend to visit pretty much every available spot in the city, unlike some artists who may not stray too far from their favoured spots, which adds to their appeal… you just never know when you might stumble across their work.
Some more jolly capers from Mr Crawls and Mote, who have been smashing it for months now, and continue to turn out some great and fun character pieces dotted all over the place. This pair of characters were painted on the warehouse wall in Cumberland Basin, and command a majestic view over the river.
To the left is a friendly, toothy monster by Mote whose eyes (in common with the adjacent Mr Crawls character) are simply holes in the head, creating a mask-like effect. There are some nice squiggles and doodles in the fill, something of a trademark of Mote’s work. On the right Mr Crawls has recreated one of his hatted birds, although in a stylised cartoon form that is more angular than some of his earlier work. The pair look magnificent on the white background, and are unusually large, due to the big wall they have chosen to paint.
I’m not sure how old this collaboration by Mr Crawls and Mote is, but it can’t be all that old, because it contains some fairly recent features incorporated into each of their work. The reason I am a bit puzzled is that the fencing in front of the wall looks like it has been there a while. All I can think is that they moved it out of the way to paint and then put it back afterwards.
To the left is a a stylised cartoon bird by Mr Crawls, which is a development of his earlier birds that we used to see about the place. There is something slightly more figurative about the artwork, and it is a direction that the artist is going in that I am definitely enjoying.
Like other artists, street artists appear to go through ‘periods’ and I would call this Mote’s ‘eye’ period, where he is playing with different presentations of eyes. The mouth of this one seems to almost be leaning in to Picasso territory, or maybe something a little more surreal. Lots more fun from these to to come, but I was happy with finding this collaboration which was just a little bit off the beaten track.
The productive partnership between Mr Crawls and Mote continues without interruption. What is comforting bout their work is that both artists are continually evolving, and their influences on one another converge and then diverge, so in this collaboration, we see that slight divergence of styles.
Mr Crawls has recently been experimenting with monochrome pieces and developed more of an angular approach to his stylised bird characters, quite a shift from his early pieces. Mote, meanwhile, is creating ever more sophisticated monsters, and working hard on particular features such as the eyelids. I continue to derive so much pleasure from these two character artists.
Another Mote monster to add to the ever-growing back-catalogue. Mote’s work tends to go through themed phases where he will produce a sting of monsters with a particular design idea, such as monster birds and monster fish and recently, monsters with one white eye and another heavily lidded eye.
Because Mote themes his work in these ‘periods’, it can be possible to date his work to within say a six month time-frame. This monster is clean and tidy with a solid purple fill and pleasing ‘ribbon’ of green running through. And those teeth!
Mote is an artist who emerged as a Bristol-based artist in the spring of 2022 and has been developing his craft steadily since then. His early pieces were relatively simple constructions with solid primary colours and thick solid lines, but he has quickly developed his style which is altogether more sophisticated while sticking to his monster characters.
This monster at the back of the Temple Meads development site is carrying a theme that Mote recently appears to be playing with which is to have the eyes appearing quite differently, one wide open, the other heavily lidded. this asymmetry certainly lends itself to the monster-like appearance of the character. There are just so many good pieces by Mote out there.
Natural adventures 