On a trip to the Big City last week, I passed by one of the nicest examples of street art I've seen in a long time, and as Fate would have it, my camera is still in the shop being repaired, so I wasn't able to get a photo of it. I'll try to paint you a picture here, although I fear I won't do the artists justice (and it won't be there for long, for obvious reasons).
On the side-facing wall of one of the large bank offices off the main street this huge mural is executed in spare, bold lines and blocks of incompletely shaded colour, as if hastily drawn, but with a balance and verve that belies the casual execution. This is rather the faux sloppiness of a Klee painting or a Latin American stencil collage: sketched with confidence and power over a vast canvas by expert hands. Especially impressive for what must have been a collaborative work; I wish I knew the graffiti scene in this city well enough to identify the artists, who deserve accolade for this. The paints are all metallic shades of car spray paint, in blue, red and aluminum-speckled black, with a few details strategically picked out in black sharpie or silver touch-up pen.
The subject of the mural, the protagonist, as it were, is an abstract figure resembling a red marshmellow man or a stylized fist holding a short dagger, perhaps a prehistoric bone knife; both the blade and the knuckles are chased in a simple zigzag filigree, shadowed to look like channels chiseled in stone. Although standing boldly and uncowed, this figure is completely overwhelmed by the rest of the image, as though about to be devoured by a giant antagonist or sucked into the monstrous background.
The gaping maw threatening our hero is a beautiful distortion of the colours and form of the Royal Union Flag, the blue triangles of St Andrew forming wicked vampire fangs, the red George and Patrick cross-bars vivid tongue or lips, and drooling blood respectively. This colonial monster wears reflective aviator shades, has fine Victorian walrus whiskers and muttonchops, and has skin puckered with acne and shattered glass. A sea of roughly squared blue strokes underfoot suggest to me discarded and worthless $5 notes, but may just as easily be broken fangs or rough mosaic flooring.
Most intriguingly, the upper approximately 1/5th of the mural shows a different approach to the canvas. Although there is clearly a unity of purpose and of mind, strokes curve downward rather than upward, there is more dripping as though more time was taken over each pass, and tellingly the blue is a different shade, one without the metallic note of the rest of the work. Without a doubt, the painter of the upper part was suspended upside-down from the brim of the roof, most likely held by the ankles by two trustworthy collaborators, while she executed the part of the design out of reach of the artist standing in the alley below. This spirit of team-work makes this a true urban artwork, a community statement that I hope was enjoyed and well-photographed before the corporate drones came along and whitewashed it within the requisite three working days.
