Dave Bain is a reasonably well known muralist in Bristol, and I have featured a few of his pieces before in Natural Adventures. This was his Upfest 2024 piece, which as you can see took up the whole front of a terraced house, giving it that something special compared to its neighbours.
Dave Bain, Upfest 2024, Bristol, May 2024
Dave Bain’s imagination and creativity have run wild in this floral piece which combined familiar shapes and figures with abstract ones. There may be a little symbolism in the piece too, with a spaceman-like figure holding up a polyhedral shape on a starry background. I feel that sometimes Dave Bain could be a little bit more adventurous with his colours, because this colour palette is quite subtle, and perhaps doesn’t do the artwork justice (my view only). An interesting festival piece.
Street art takes many forms, and encompasses so much more than graffiti writing and spray-painted portraits, characters or scenes. It is a broad church that encompasses murals using spray paint or other painting materials, paste-ups and installations large and small. Hardcore followers like to stick with spray paint work, but I like to find and write about all forms of street artwork, and this wonderful toadstool piece by Le Imposter Design is a perfect example of a modest hand-painted tiny mural.
Le Imposter Design, Greenbank, Bristol, June 2024
I have posted all the Le Imposter Design pieces that I have found (three so far), because I feel they help to represent this vast spectrum of street art in Bristol. Most of her work features plants or fungus, and this is a particularly nice example, with a purple-capped toadstool and some rather pretty ground plants and flowers. She has added some little stars, to add a little bit of context and atmosphere. The piece is small and low down on the hoarding. Blink and you would miss it. More to come from Le Imposter Design.
Hazard, Little Bishop Street, Bristol, August 2024
Sometimes I am slow to find a piece, coming a across it accidentally and rather late to the party, and sometimes I am slow to post a piece for whatever reason, and dig it out of my archive. In the case of this stunning mural from Hazard I was slow on both counts.
Hazard, Little Bishop Street, Bristol, August 2024
Hazard leaving Bristol is a big loss, and although she returns from time to time to paint a large wall for a commission or a Festival, it isn’t quite the same as her being here to drop a street piece from time to time. I guess people move around the country all the time for all sorts of different reasons, but they are missed by those they leave behind. This magnificent mural is painted on the side of the Julian Trust night shelter for homeless people and features a rough sleeper painted in the blues, reds greens and purples that are very much part of Hazard’s favoured palette. This is a great example of how to uplift an ordinary building, and add relevance to its function. Fabulous.
Dave Bain and David J. McMillan, Church Road, Bristol, September 2024
I find myself in a bit of a rush this morning, because I have a dental appointment before work. I’m slightly anxious about what is going to happen with my tooth, having lost quite a large section of it a week or so ago. I guess I have to yield to the professional and just get on with it.
I drove past this mural a few weeks ago, coming back from the dog sitter who lives in a part of town I don’t go to all that often. I don’t know how long it has been there, but I can’t recall ever having seen it before.
Dave Bain and David J. McMillan, Church Road, Bristol, September 2024
The large mural on Church Road is by Dave Bain and David J McMillan, and not being overly familiar with the work of either artist, I am not too sure who is responsible for which parts of the mural. The piece speaks of recreation and connecting with nature, which is always a welcome theme in my view. I love the execution of the mural, but I fear that the colours look a little washed out, but that might be an artifact of the rather overcast weather when I took the photographs. It is always great to find new pieces, especially significant murals like this one. Nice work from Dave and David.
Hannah Adamaszek, Upfest 2024, North Street, Bristol, May 2024
One of the first pieces I saw being painted at Upfest this year was this wonderful, relaxing piece by Hannah Adamaszek. As is usually the case, she was accompanied by her friend and artist Stephen Quick, who was making use of his height to help out with some of the harder-to-reach parts of the mural.
Hannah Adamaszek, Upfest 2024, North Street, Bristol, May 2024
Hannah Adamaszek manages to create a great sense of calm and wellbeing in her pieces, which usually feature people in relaxed poses or situations. She has done an outstanding job of capturing the movement and colours of the water in which the subject is swimming.
Hannah Adamaszek, Upfest 2024, North Street, Bristol, May 2024
I think I have seen one of her pieces in Leake Street tunnel, otherwise I have only seen her Upfest and Tobacco Factory pieces, but they are enough to satisfy my appetite for her work. Great mural.
There are some pieces, especially during street art festivals, which simply have the ‘wow’ factor, where you stand before them in admiration, and in my view, this stunner by Epod3000 is one of those. Firstly, this wall is one of the most striking in Bedminster, and although not the easiest to photograph, it certainly has impact when it reveals itself to those walking along West Street.
Epod, Upfest 2024, Pantiles, Bristol, May 2024
The piece, called ‘Side.E’, a reference to the vinyl LP and deck at the top features a beautiful portrait of a woman (with lots of drips). The clever bit is that Epod has apinted the portrait in a way that makes it look like a poster that is peeling off from the wall – you know… the way advertising posters do after a while. It is a device used quite a lot in street art, and done well, like this, is wonderful.
Epod, Upfest 2024, Pantiles, Bristol, May 2024
Because of the wall opposite the piece, it is quite difficult to take a decent photograph from directly in front of it, without it looking a little distorted, but I have done my best here. I was lucky enough to see another of his pieces yesterday in Cheltenham, which I will post in due course. All great stuff from Epod.
On the corner of Cheltenham Road and Elton Road, is a rather progressive funeral parlour (we used to call them undertakers when I was growing up) called Divine Ceremony, and recently they commissioned Farrah to paint a large mural in the car park behind their business. Farrah’s abstract work lends itself so very well to this kind of commission.
Farrah, Elton Road, Bristol, July 2024
There are a handful of artists who land a whole lot of commissions in the city, and perhaps the best known are Andy Council, Alex Lucas and Farrah, who between them have a great many intact pieces on both sides of the river. I could attempt to put my take on the wonderful mural, but I thought it would be better coming from Farrah herself, and the following was taken from her Instagram feed:
Such a pleasure to paint this mural for @divineceremony – a female owned and run business for such a beautiful and honourable service for humanity.
It was like a godsend for Dee Ryding at Divine Ceremony to find and connect with me last year. She said I was the perfect fit to paint the walls for her funeral business and now I truly understand why it was meant to be!
I love to bring joy to people through my art. And they bring joy too when it is so much needed in immensely difficult times. They celebrate a persons life and care for them and their families in such a gentle and beautiful respectful way, for the next part of the journey. What beautiful people! Wow.
I have come to realise myself recently that there is so much beauty in sadness too. And hope in the unknown. I believe life always continues in this beautiful divine universe. Hence my mural is like the flow of life, never ending, forever flowing. It may seem like the end on this planet for people that have passed on. But I think it’s only the beginning and that there is another beautiful and divine place beyond what we see. Beauty and eternal joy beyond the darkness, beyond that portal. It is always with us.
Thank you Divine Ceremony for choosing me to paint for you. It was a absolute privilege 🙏
Farrah, Elton Road, Bristol, July 2024
I had to return to the car park a second time, because there was a car parked right in front of the left hand end of the wall the first time I visited. This is probably the nearest street art to where I live, and I will see it most days, which is a great thing really. The perfect commission perfectly executed by Farrah.
Lots going on this morning getting in the way of writing posts. The General Election results are in and we will have a labour Government, having seen off the Conservatives… at last. In my constituency a Green candidate won, which is great news, bringing the total of Green MPs up to 4 from 1 before – the start of something exciting perhaps. I am also not feeling too bright – I have tested negative for Covid, so it must be some other stoopid summer bug that I have.
Jagung, Upfest 24, West Street, Bristol, May 2024
There were so many outstanding Upfest murals this year, but this was one of the most eye-catching. Painted by Jagung, a young Malaysian artist, who loves to use colour, talking in his profile about playing with colour inversion, although I don’t see any evidence of it here.
Jagung, Upfest 24, West Street, Bristol, May 2024
The day I photographed this piece, it was surprisingly busy, and I had to wait a while before I could hog the space. The portrait piece is notable for the large amount of the wall taken up by the orange yellow and red figurative flames, and relatively small portrait – a clever device to create tons of movement and energy.
Jagung, Upfest 24, West Street, Bristol, May 2024
A close up of the face and hand of our hero shows that Jagung hasn’t shirked or dodged doing an incredible job with creating the realism of the face within the abstract frame of swirling flames. A hot mural in all senses of the word.
Emotional Waterfall Art, Upfest 24, Exeter Road, Bristol, May 2024
If you like bright and colourful abstract designs, then this piece by Emotional Waterfall Art painted at Upfest 2024 will be right up your street. The artist is no stranger to Upfest, and she painted an enormous mural for the 75×75 event in 2021. I am not certain, because her social media accounts are vague, but I think that she is Bristol-based, or at least from the West of England.
Emotional Waterfall Art, Upfest 24, Exeter Road, Bristol, May 2024
This piece is painted on a gate in Exeter Road (one for Thursday Doors in a year or two) adding a vibrant splash of colour. There is a whole ton of positive energy coming at you from the mixture of shapes and patterns in this delightful mural. I believe, from reading her Instagram post about that this piece, that she had a really great day painting it.
Sr. Papa Chango, Upfest 24, Redpoint Climbing Centre, Bristol, May 2024
Where to start with this outstanding and unbelievably cute piece by Sr. Papa Chango? An extraordinary still-life framed composition with a bowl of fruit and a decanter is enhanced with the appearance of two fluffy characters that appear to have artistic ambitions. The piece is so well painted, it almost looks like a poster that has been pasted up on this large wall.
Sr. Papa Chango, Upfest 24, Redpoint Climbing Centre, Bristol, May 2024
I had not heard of Sr. Papa Chango before I saw this piece, and I believe that this might be his first trip to the UK, and definitely his first to Bristol. The Mexican artist now lives and paints out of Berlin, and is the creator of some magnificent murals like this one.
Sr. Papa Chango, Upfest 24, Redpoint Climbing Centre, Bristol, May 2024
The artwork is so good and the creativity almost dreamlike and fantastical. In this piece he has managed to create a contrast between the passivity of the fruit and the activity of the adorable creatures, both of which are spilling out of the frame. This piece on the huge Redpoint Climbing Centre wall is absolutely one of the highlights of Upfest 2024.
Natural adventures 