Another one from my archive, but the piece, by Kin Dose is somewhat older than my photograph of it. Positioned in a bricked up gateway this stencil is perfectly framed, and is sited in an area without much street art itself, but the surrounding areas are awash with it.
Kin Dose, Bedminster, Bristol, April 2019
I have seen this owl stencil a few times in Bristol, but each one has a different background of colours and swirls, this one with a big bright hunter’s moon. This is what Kin Dose brings to his stencil work, each piece is distinct and different even though at it’s heart is the same core piece. A nice find.
I love my little trips through my archives every now and again, and the recent weather has dictated that fewer new pieces are being painted and this has given me the tiniest bit of space to dig up some gems. This is one from Lobe from April this year before I knew who the artist was.
Lobe, St Werburghs, Bristol, April 2019
Regular readers will know that I am going through a bit of a Lobe ‘period’ in Natural Adventures, and am very much enjoying her work. Adopting her usual style of a stylised portrait filled with bold solid colours, this is typical of her work. There is a lot more to come from Lobe, I am sure of it and I am looking forward to watching her work develop.
One of the most welcome sights on any wall in Bristol has to be the beautiful form and colours of a Tasha Bee stylised face. Distinctive and full of serene character, her work, to me at least, feels like it is very ‘Bristol’ if that makes any sense at all, even though I think, like me, Tasha Bee is not a native Bristolian.
Tasha Bee, St Werburghs, Bristol, September 2019
It would be easy just to focus on the face of this piece at the entrance to St Werburghs tunnel, but that would ignore the fine hair ornament with joyful colours radiating out from a central circle. Unfortunately the piece had been tagged by the time I got to see it… I just don’t understand the point of tagging something as beautiful as this, is it some kind of assertion of dominance from people who are natural undear-achievers? It is difficult to know.
I have not seen much of Korp’s work but everything I have seen from this artist I very much like. His highly distinctive style is instantly recognisable and quite unlike anything else out there. I don’t know what he calls his characters, but they usually look a bit like worms to me, although this one painted at this year’s Cheltenham Paint Festival s a little different.
Korp, Paint Festival 2019, Cheltenham, September 2019
The piece is painted on a backdrop of hand paste ups with the words ‘The Hand Mischief’ written on them. Over the top of this paper wall Korp has painted a demonic looking character with ears and red eyes I wouldn’t normally associate with his pieces. Is this simply what it is, or is it a piece full of symbolism and meaning? I am not sure, but it is a classy piece either way.
This is an absolutely terrific piece from a Bristol fave, Hazard, and she has really stuck to the brief by painting a piece that links to literature and in this case the Maya Angelou autobiography ‘I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings’. I have not read this book, but clearly it is a favourite of the artist, and she has created a beautiful atmosphere of reading with this long wall mural.
Hazard, Paint Festival 2019, Cheltenham, September 2019
What I like about this piece is that it has a real sense of calm about it, from the soft decorative bookends to the gentle light touching the reader’s face, a reader who it utterly absorbed by what she is reading. The piece is in stark contrast to its surroundings but cleverly draws you in so that all you can see is the reader.
Hazard, Paint Festival 2019, Cheltenham, September 2019
I was fortunate enough to meet Hazard for the first time when she was setting up to paint the wall, and I was pleased to discover that she knew about Natural Adventures and had read some of my posts about her work.
I always feel a little embarrassed about striking up a conversation with street artists, because what I do is a little bit niche and consuming and I am prone to being a little bit star-struck on a first meeting. This is an utterly irrational position, because in my experience street and graffiti artists are some of the most down-to-earth and decent people that I know.
So you get nothing from an artist forever and then two posts in the space of three days, and so it is with this character piece by Flava136. I don’t really know why I haven’t seen much of his work before, but I seem to be finding plenty of it now.
Flava136, Paint Festival 2019, Cheltenham, September 2019
This is one of a couple of pieces by Flava136 at the Cheltenham Paint Festival, but this one lasted rather longer than his other one in the Honeybourne Line tunnel which was wrecked, along with several others the night it was completed. Every time I see his work I am reminded of Stitch from the film Lilo and Stitch, I’m sorry I can’t help it…my bad.
* When I moved to Bristol in the early nineties the Bristol urban fox population was famously thriving, in fact my allotment had the highest density of foxes on record anywhere in the world. It couldn’t last and the double whammy of mange and the introduction of wheelie bins saw the population crash.
Over the years numbers have increased again and this was one of two foxes I saw on my short walk to the station this morning.
Natural adventures 