By Leigha O’Reilly Hughes
Dublin City Council have called upon local street artists to take part in their ‘Paint The Town’ project.
This project is to improve the appearance of the city with large scale art pieces at five different locations around Dublin to celebrate the city reopening after Covid-19.
“Artists are encouraged to be as creative as possible with their designs,” says Dublin City Council.
“The purpose is to celebrate the city and enhance the experience of the public when coming into the city while supporting Street Art as an art form.”
One of the locations is Dorset street. Shane Sutton is a visual artist from Dublin who works with both street and canvas combined.
Sutton, who used spray paint for his project, painted a large-scale image of two foxes in black and white on the side of the Terence Harvey Limited. This is an extension of another painting he did for the Dublin City Council of swans, which can be found in Portobello.
“I originally wanted to tie in foxes with the other painting, but it wasn’t quite the right space. When the space came to paint on that building, the shape was perfect for the foxes,” says Sutton.
“The opportunity to draw something so big in a great spot near Croke Park was a great one.”
Another painting is located in Kevin Street. This is a mural by Cian Walker from Dublin who paints graffiti and abstract images.
Walker, who takes inspiration from the many abstract artists in Ireland, painted a long abstract mural at Camden Yard by Westridge at Kevin street.
Walker took in the surrounding area to incorporate in his mural such as the mosaics in the flats and the former DIT in Kevin street.
“It was a really enjoyable project. It felt like I was able to fuse a lot of my interests into this one project,” Walker told the Irish Times.
The other locations that will have paintings are Townsend Street, the Gable on Bow Street and Prussia Street.