During my many walks around the city, I found plenty of good quality street art outside the Nuart and Painted Doors projects. The ‘Release the Pressure’ festival from 2016, at the Arches in Union Terrace Gardens provided a great deal of work from a variety of artists, local guys like Craig Fisher, who is now Brewdog’s resident artist, now travelling the globe brightening up their premises, and may other Aberdonian painters.
During my time at the festival, I went to some of the walks and talks, one presentation, by Alex Hale, which interested me was one in which Tags, Graphs and Murals were discussed, I could see evidence of these techniques on display throughout the city, and I could see how some locals had embraced these techniques.
I could also see evidence of how some locals, such as Smoke, Slave and new faces, Abz Jawa, Fit Like and Jetpack Dinosaur, had developed or changed their style. I noticed that Andrew Garden, aka ABZJawa, has added to his Graphs and Stick-Ups and is now producing ceramic mosaics of Star Wars figures, which dot the city, perhaps he was influenced by the work done in the city by Carrie Reichardt for Nuart 2018. The influence of the ‘Big Guns’ of the urban art scene can certainly influence the emergent artists, this can only be good for a city.
Another artist to visit the city and leave his mark is Liverpool based Lost Hills. His distinctive characters based on popular cartoon character Jake the dog, have appeared not only in Aberdeen but literally up and down the country.
Jim's travels 