Upfest – Natural adventures

Thursday doors – 25 September 2025 – Street art/graffiti doors

Doors 325 – Street art and graffiti doors

Whenever I run a street art doors post, it tends to signal that I am busy or under pressure and haven’t had time to sort out a ‘regular’ post. I have just returned from holiday and simply haven’t been able to prepare for the continuation of Marrakesh Doors that I was expecting to post today.

The reason it is quicker to post about street art doors is that all the pictures have previously appeared on Natural Adventures in my street art/graffiti posts, and are ready to go, which means the only bit I have to sort out is this writing bit.

These pictures were mostly taken in May last year, many of them painted during the Upfest 24 paint festival (the largest street art festival in Europe). I hope you enjoy them.

M. Oldhues, Ashton Road, Upfest 24, Bristol, May 2024

Abraham.O, North Street, Upfest 24, Bristol, May 2024

Zoe Power, Wilder Street, Bristol, May 2024

Yoliws, North Street, Bristol, January 2024

Jagung, Upfest 24, West Street, Bristol, May 2024

Emotional Waterfall Art, Upfest 24, Exeter Road, Bristol, May 2024

Bex Glover, Upfest 24, Stackpool Road, Bristol, May 2024

Sepr, Upfest 24, The Nursery, Bristol, May 2024

Shane O'Malley, Upfest 24, Bedminster Down Road, Bristol, May 2024 — Shane O’Malley, Upfest 24, Bedminster Down Road, Bristol, May 2024

Stewy, Grevile Smyth Park, Bristol, May 2024

I sincerely hope that normal service will return next time as I continue with some more wonderful doors from Marrakesh. Have a great end of week and weekend.

If you have made it this far, you probably like doors, and you really ought to take a look at the No Facilities blog by Dan Anton who has taken over the hosting of Thursday Doors from Norm 2.0 blog. Links to more doorscursions can be found in the comments section of Dan Anton’s weekly Thursday Doors post.

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Jack Lack, Upfest 24, Greville Street, Bristol, May 2024

Jack Lack is an artist from Stuttgart, Germany, who is a muralist who uses cans and rollers in his work, influenced by the graffiti scene. When I first saw this impressive and moving piece, I assumed the animal was a fox, but it was nagging me that the proportions of the snout, and markings were all wrong. It turns out that it is a red panda, and this is what the artist wrote about the piece:

Sometimes things are easier to comprehend if they are fluffy, so here is an endangered red panda dealing with a pointy nest. Hopefully soon we can steer the world to an increase in safe homes for everyone.

So it would seem that the red panda nestled in amongst some arrows is a metaphor for safe homes for everyone, and I guess that means domestically and those suffering in war zones or other disaster areas around the world. It is a powerful piece, but more than that it is superbly painted, and a stand out piece from the 2024 Upfest festival.

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Dave Bain, Upfest 2024, Bristol, May 2024

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’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.

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Katie Scott, Upfest 24, Lime Road, Bristol, May 2024

Peeping over a wall in Lime Road, is this extraordinary toy Troll piece by Katie Scott, who has been smashing it with her amazing toy work, including Barbies, over the last couple of years. Definitely this is one of the most memorable pieces of 2024 and unfortunately one of the most difficult to photograph. I think it is now time to yield to drone envy and ask for one for my birthday.

The whole piece, includes a woman’s hand holding the Troll, but that part of her work is hidden in an inaccessible and rather narrow lane. Although difficult to capture, the piece itself is perfectly painted, and one of the trademarks of Katie Scott’s work is the animation photorealism she manages to achieve, as if the image were from a Disney Pixar still or something like that.

Katie Scott painted an unbelievable Barbie doll at the Cheltenham Paint Festival in 2023, but I never got to see and photograph the completed piece. She is definitely a rising star, and her talent is out there for everyone to see. As for the Troll, I rather hope that it isn’t overpainted, because it looks so right where it is.

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Sarah Trotter, Upfest 24, The Tobaccco Factory, Bristol, May 2024

Upfest is a huge opportunity for local, national and international artists to show off their artwork, and it can be exceptionally good exposure for some of our local artists, such as Sarah Trotter. I have only seen one piece before by Sarah Trotter, which was painted in Dean Lane as part of a Bristol Mural Collective paint jam, and I remember very much liking that piece.

Sarah Trotter’s elaborate and colourful style is a sumptuous feast for the eyes, full of richness and detail. It looks like this piece contains a fair amount of symbolism, with the centrepiece featuring a circle, a triangle and a sphere. Sitting above are wings and some beautiful feathers, and all of it set on a barren orange landscape and turquoise sky. Wonderful stuff.

Sarah Trotter, Dean Lane, Bristol, May 2023

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SEPC, Upfest 24, Dean Lane, Bristol, May 2024

Since the stormy and wet winter weather started up in earnest about a month ago, fewer artists have been out and about, doing what they do best, a pause which frees me up to post a few pieces from Upfest earlier in the year. This one from SEPC is an absolute beauty, and one of the first I saw at this year’s festival.

SEPC is an artist from Manizales in Colombia whose colourful work embodies the connection of people in an urban environment, and his profile on the Upfest website is well worth a read. This was one of two or three pieces that the artist painted while he was in town. I love his humble approach, with plastic bags and boxes full of paint and kit for painting.

In his own words, SEPC combines photorealism with use of colour and incorporates various contextual elements. In other words, there is a lot going on in this work alongside the main portrait pieces, and all of it superbly painted. SEPC’s work was one of the real highlights of this year’s festival.

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Zoe Power, Upfest 24, The Tobaccco Factory, Bristol, September 2024

At Upfest 2024, the format of the festival changed a bit, and I don’t think that it worked as well as it has in the past. I believe that the changes have come about by the enormous cost of hosting a festival over two days, and the rapidity of the clean-up afterwards have worn down the organisers. So this year we had feature walls which were painted over a three week period, allowing for a lot of high-end murals, and small 1m square boards – there was nothing in-between, which is the bread and butter for most street artists.

The 1m boards were painted on three occasions, and I managed to photograph them on one of those occasions, missing out on the other two. This was a board painted by the wonderful local artist Zoe Power.

The stylised painting is full of symbolism, and a story of our time. It features a hand holding an olive branch, and rarely have we needed to see the olive branch extended more than now. There is a simplicity and crispness in the piece that betrays the complexity of the underlying messaging and what it represents. It is always a real treat to see Zoe Power’s work.

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Tymon de Laat, North Street, Bristol, September 2024

Although this is one of the more awkward walls to photograph, it often hosts some of the best Upfest pieces. This year it was the turn of Tymon de Laat and he has done the spot proud with this incredible portrait piece of a Mexican man, called ‘Moon over Matalán’. It is simply beautiful.

What is good about Upfest is that you will often get a chance to see the artists at work, and sometimes stop for a chat. Unfortunately the artist was busy up a scissor platform when I was passing by and I never got a chance to say hello.

This year I managed to get up onto the roof of the building adjacent to the wall and took some super shots of the piece as it is meant to be seen, but which most people don’t get to see. The old man has paint on his face, which is a trademark feature of Tymon de Laat’s work. There is so much character in the man’s face, and his hat captures the atmosphere of a hot Mexico.

Surrounding the portrait is a garland of dried corn and chillies, rounding the piece off nicely and without which the piece might feel a bit stark. This was clearly one of my highlights from this year’s festival. Bravo!

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Perspicere, Upfest 24, The Tobaccco Factory, Bristol, September 2024

Sometimes street art takes on a new and vibrant form, and even when you think you’ve seen it all, an artist like Perspicere will come along and blow your mind. I have been aware of Perspicere for a couple of years, but managed to encounter him at work twice this year, both at Upfest and at the Cheltenham Paint Festival.

Perspicere works with thread that is suspended between rows of hooks along each side of the frame. By threading the line across from one hook to another again and again in a very specific order he builds up a layer of thread that has depth and colour, tricking the eyes. He uses only four colours of thread (red, blue, yellow and white) and the whole thing is worked out using a computer programme, and he has to follow the directions meticulously. The end result is mind-boggling, especially on the scale that he works to.

I think that you have to have a special kind of patience and determination to do this kind of thing, but perhaps it is a rather mindful exercise and great for zoning out. A fine addition to the spectrum of art at this year’s Upfest.

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Jimmer Wilmott, Upfest 24, The Tobaccco Factory, Bristol, September 2024

Somehow this piece by Jimmer Wilmott passed me by at this year’s Upfest, and I only got to see it recently during a visit to a few spots with Paul H, including the Tobacco Factory. Sunday is the best day to visit this spot, because there are no cars in the parking spaces, which are immediately in front of the wall. Saturdays would also be good, if it weren’t for the market, which clogs things up a bit.

Jimmer Wilmott has been working in the studio on canvass with his ‘alphabetti spaghetti’ pieces for quite a long while now, but this is the first wall I am aware of that he has decorated in this way. The concept is simple and brilliant and somehow he achieves a photorealistic presentation, which causes many a double-take. Spelling ‘Jimmer was ere’, this is a creative delight from one of the most creative talents in Bristol.

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