Spring is here, accompanied by the usual flourish of greenery and ever-brighter colours as flowers and street art go into full bloom...
Actually, that's not entirely true, as far as the urban art is concerned, as this is not a season-specific activity, as I've learnt over the past few months.
And I have been taken off guard several times now, not suspecting that the street artists would be so busy throughout the colder, greyer times.
But, of course, they have. Prolific even...
And thankfully too, in this singularly unattractive part of town, termed '
une zone'.
The designs that I've admired have repeatedly been replaced by others...
Or have been altered somewhat or added to, as the one below, becoming ever more intricate...
And even when I think they can't possibly change again, they do.
Bursting out of the grey concrete surfaces...
The only difference this time, was that I finally had the chance to meet the artists themselves. Unfortunately I was without my camera on that particular day.
I was really pleased to get to ask the questions that I'd been asking myself about this urban art...
The first questions being, when did they come to paint, as I'd certainly never come across them before then, either during the week or at weekends...
Apparently they tend to come at the weekend, mostly Sundays, but don't appear to limit themselves to that, as I later saw one artist retouching a work in the week, as the shoppers were loading up their groceries. The other site that I was aware about, namely the nearby car park of the Renault garage, has a more limited access due to the locked gates at the weekend, whilst the volume of parked cars must limit painting during the week.
In answer to the question about how they could afford to do so much work, with the vast quantities of cans of spray that must entail, they told me that they shop online and get discount prices on larger orders.
This is probably just as well, since they seem to apply a base paint as a background, rather than simply painting over past works. With the extensive surface area of the walls, this must represent litres of paint.
As I spoke to the group, one artist was applying the turquoise background that can be seen on the first photos, and that has since been largely replaced by a brick red.
They also told me about the other site where they work; the docking area for a concert hall. As I hadn't discovered this one myself, I was pleased to visit it...
Yet it must be said, I ran in and out to take these photos because the area is quite creepy, in spite of all that colour. It is one of the places where you can't work out if it's worse to encounter somebody or nobody at all....
As can be seen, every possible surface has been decorated....
This created weird patchworks and overlaps...
That seem to explode out of those (originally) dingy, grim walls...
Incidentally, for all the colour of their art, the artists themselves were all dressed in very unassuming, non-descript shades...
The group that I met was quite large, dispelling the notion that it might have been just a few extremely active artists...
Presumably it was the art that brought them all together because the age range went from young teenager to adult.
There were no girls in this group, but they said that there are female urban artists and it's true that I've already noticed a few decorating the tunnels next to the canal.
Nevertheless, the local urban art here is the best that I've seen around and about town. I was pleased to get the chance to tell them how great I thought their work was, but addressed the older ones...
Understandably, the younger artists looked duly horrifed to have an admirer, at least the age of their own mothers! How uncool is that?!!. Oh well....
The one question I really wanted to ask was how they found their ideas and inspiration for their forms and colours, and if they had any art training.
They said that their work was just a giant version of all the drawings and designs they'd scrawled over their school books. Finally, I asked them if they kept a record of all of this great art, through photos or film, but they didn't really appear to. That seems to make it all the more special and, of course, unique.
