A couple of quick ones today. It is the morning after my mother’s 90th birthday party, which was a hugely enjoyable event in Farnham Castle in Surrey, but we need to have breakfast, check out and then drive back to Bristol. As I said yesterday, Nice one has been smashing it with his combination pieces already this year, and this is another new piece up at the Purdown anti-aircraft battery.
Nice One, Purdown, Bristol, February 2025
At first, it might not look like a combination piece, but you can just spot the top half of his Times New Roman ‘N’ and the dot of the ‘i’ at the bottom of the piece. The First World War dogfight scene is just something you don’t see anywhere in Bristol and confirms Nice One as one of the most original and exciting artists around. Fabulous work.
The derelict gun emplacement at Purdown is located within a fenced-off area which is home to a small herd of goats. I think that they are ‘employed’ to help the vegetation down. The presence of the goats makes my trips with the dog something of a challenge, because their smell and very existence drives him crazy, and I have to keep him on a very tight lead. This of course makes taking photographs all the more difficult, with many images blurry of at jaunty angles, when the dog pulls just as I take the shot. I did manage to get a couple of decent pictures of this fabulous goat character piece by Daz Cat.
Daz Cat, Purdown, Bristol, January 2024
Daz Cat continues to develop his style and his pieces are so much richer in content and style and offer a great deal of depth and context that was absent from his early ‘flat’ pieces. He is a great example of an artist who learns and improves all the time. There are other artists who tend to remain quite static and comfortable doing what they do. Both approaches are legitimate, although as an observer, watching the development is an added bonus. I hope the goats of Purdown appreciate this homage.
Conrico is a very unusual street artist. He appears to be equally comfortable with graffiti writing or characters or landscapes and so on, always appearing to tell stories in his work. Much of his art and creativity is influenced by Japanese culture, and his spray technique looks much more like brush work than spray-painting. He is quite unique.
Conrico, Purdown, Bristol, January 2025
This piece was painted in three hours and features an Asian lady in an American diner – I found out this information from his Instagram feed. The piece is based on a photograph of Minami Yuzuzu, a Japanese actress/popular figure? His blend of cultures and special style has created a special and imaginative piece, not the sort of thing you might expect to see walking the dog through a WWII gun emplacement (unless you lived in Bristol).
This is my 80th post from Purdown, but if I am honest, it feel like an awful lot more. Daz Cat seems to like it up here and the square format of the concrete blocks seems to suit his designs. It is always far more difficult for writers to fill a square space than for character artists.
Daz Cat, Purdown, Bristol, September 2024
Daz Cat has painted a cat (naturally) curled up in the square. The blue cat is wearing a fabulous orange striped shirt and shorts combination, and looks really rather cute. The cat is smiling and there is a good feeling all round about this piece. I will never tire of Daz Cats’ cats.
Rowdy, Andy Council and Acer One, Purdown, Bristol, August 2024
You don’t expect to see production collaborations up at Purdown, so it was wonderful to see this ‘take-over’ by Rowdy, Acer One and Andy Council on the concrete slabs of the derelict anti-aircraft gun emplacement. The light conditions were tricky on both occasions that I went up there, and the photographs don’t really do justice to this creative display.
Acer One, Purdown, Bristol, August 2024
Starting in the Centre and on the margins, Acer One has painted one of his mind-boggling impossible triangle pieces, displaying great technical skills and accuracy. This is the third such piece I am aware of that he has painted in this spot.
Andy Council, Purdown, Bristol, August 2024Andy Council, Purdown, Bristol, August 2024
On either side of Acer One’s centrepiece, Andy Council has painted his trademark ammonites in living-fossil form, each using his composite method to stitch together the creatures from components to make a whole. The dusky pink background used by Acer One and Andy Council works very nicely with their respective colour schemes.
Rowdy, Purdown, Bristol, August 2024Rowdy, Purdown, Bristol, August 2024
Finally, bookending the collaboration, Rowdy has joined in the fun with a fabulous collection of Bristol crocodiles. More than any other active artist in Bristol, I think that Rowdy represents that raw, quirky, subversive and original talent that underpins the whole graffiti/street art scene in the city, and long may it last. This is a fabulous production piece from the trio of great artists.
When I first encountered Mr Crawls, it was his pieces of birds that first caught my eye, and although he has come on quite a way from his early Bristol pieces, with the encouragement of his painting partner Mote, this particular piece up at Purdown is a bit of a throwback.
Mr Crawls, Purdown, Bristol, August 2024
The particular type of bird is a little difficult to nail down. The colour of the beak and head would suggest a gull, but the shape of the beak is far more raptor-like. I guess it doesn’t actually matter, because the joy of creative art is that you can conjure up imaginary things and situations. This is a fun piece from the productive Mr Crawls.
I have encountered many pieces on the concrete walls at the WWII gun emplacement in Purdown by artists I have never heard of before, and some never since. I believe that this is the first time I have seen anything by Noods, and given that he operates out of Berlin/Glasgow, I’m not sure if I will see anything of his again.
Noods, Purdown, Bristol, July 2024
This silhouette piece relies almost entirely on shadows cast to create depth and interest. I don’t know why, but it reminds me a little of the work of Giorgio de Chirico, I think it must be the shadows. There is a lot of atmosphere and drama in the piece, but an absence of movement, perhaps another de Chiricoesque feature. Nice one.
I met Hardie while he was painting at Upfest, and what a friendly fellow he is. Although I think I have only ever posted one or two of his pieces on Natural Adventures, he seemed to know who I was and was familiar with my blog, which was most encouraging.
Hardie, Purdown, Bristol, July 2024
The Bristol-based artist doesn’t tend to paint the streets all that often the odd shutter or wall here or there but rarely in the popular hotspots, so it was a super surprise to find two of his pieces side by side in the wartime gun emplacement. His characteristic character portraits are made up of a patchwork of crosshatches, creating a really interesting effect. As you can see from these two pieces, Hardie uses a stencil to create his faces, and it also demonstrates how using different colours can create a different look from essentially the same template. What a pleasure to come across these rarities.
One of the great pleasures of my trip to Cheltenham two weekends ago for the Cheltenham Paint Festival was catching up with Conrico while he was painting a wide piece spanning a bridge. We chatted for quite a while, and I came away with the impression of a really decent man who so utterly enjoys his craft. We talked about all sorts of things like where his name comes from and what his connection with Japan is and so on. Fascinating stuff.
Conrico, Purdown, Bristol, July 2024
This is a gorgeous Japanese scene with a pathway leading up to a small building and a lantern lighting the way. There are ghostly figures sitting on the roof of the structure and nearby, giving the whole thing quite a spiritual feel. Maybe the figures are ancestors. As with much of his work, Conrico has constructed a story and illustrated it beautiful, bringing a tiny little bit of Japan to Bristol.
After a little teaser in Bristol last year at the M32 Spot and on the cycle path with Rusk, The Art of Sok has had something of a bonanza in the city this summer, and even better than that, I have managed to catch up with the artist twice in the space of a month, and what a lovely fellow he is too.
The Art of Sok, Purdown, Bristol, July 2024
This beautifully framed piece, on one of the concrete slabs in the old anti-aircraft gun emplacement, breathes new life into this historic monument, and reflects the freedoms that the nation fought the second world war for. The Art of Sok manages to paint flawless pieces, and takes great care to ensure every detail is exactly how he planned it. I believe this could be described as a Manga-style portrait, and is one that definitely ticks all my boxes.
Natural adventures 