Growing up in a small town in Poland, graffiti wasn’t a big part of artist Natalia Rak’s childhood. But now that she is painting on walls, she’s come to appreciate it. First featured on our blog here, her murals are instantly recognizable for their intensely vibrant color palette.
Rak’s street art brings the narrative character of her canvases to a large scale, depicting children in idyllic Norman Rockwell-inspired scenes, and in newer works, more adult figures playing out classical Shakespearean themes: her murals have dealt with themes of good and evil, young love, and appearance and reality, as in her modern take on Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass which was also the subject of her debut solo show in 2014.
Her most recent mural titled “Fishing Dreams”, painted in September in Ragusa, Italy, portrays a fantastical image of a boy fishing from atop a crescent moon. Other new pieces include a tragic portrayal of “Romeo and Juliet” in Caserta Italy, and a beautiful grieving “Ophelia”, whose death has been praised as one of the most poetic in literature, painted during the NoLimit Festival in Boras, Sweden. “I always want to provoke emotions, create mood, force the viewer to think. I like to change the theme and try new things,” she says.
Juanjo Surace’s expertise in animation and character design comes through the murals he crafts on walls across the globe. His surreal work often confronts themes from our own reality, from death and solitude to technology and consumption. The above work, "The Trip," was painted over 14 days in Vinaròs.
A far cry from the tight, linear style of graffiti,