When Nature Takes Over (11 Photos)
Content warning: These artists didn't just paint nature; they teamed up with it. From trees breaking through brick walls to faces carved in living wood, here are 11 times the wild world took over the canvas. 🐿️ The Squirrel and the Robin — By Curtis Hylton in Oskarshamn,
These artists didn’t just paint nature; they teamed up with it. From trees breaking through brick walls to faces carved in living wood, here are 11 times the wild world took over the canvas.
🐿️ The Squirrel and the Robin — By Curtis Hylton in Oskarshamn, Sweden 🇸🇪
A giant squirrel and robin take over the wall. This isn’t just paint, it’s a neighborhood forest.
More by Curtis Hylton: Parrot mural by Curtis Hylton for UPFEST
💡 Nerd Fact: Curtis Hylton has said he tries to keep the flora and fauna native to the place he’s painting, so walls like this read less like generic wildlife art and more like oversized biodiversity portraits.
🔗 Follow Curtis Hylton on Instagram
🌾 Among the Grass — By Krzysztof Bitka in Szczecin, Poland 🇵🇱
Plot twist: you are the bug. This giant meadow makes everyone walking past feel two inches tall.
More photos: Flower Mural by Krzysztof Bitka
💡 Nerd Fact: This mural’s original project title was Pielenie — “weeding” in Polish — which gives the whole image a neat reversal: instead of humans controlling nature, the human figure is completely swallowed by it.
🌿 Gentiana Lutea — By Mona Caron in Le Locle, Switzerland 🇨🇭
Mona Caron has a gift for making plants feel monumental without losing their fragility. This mural climbs the building the way a real wildflower seems to claim impossible places.
More by Mona Caron: Flower mural by Mona Caron in Switzerland
💡 Nerd Fact: In Le Locle, this plant is more than botanical decoration, Exomusée notes that great yellow gentian appears in the region’s Sapin-style Art Nouveau and even supplied stem wood for hand-polishing fine watch parts.
🔗 Follow Mona Caron on Instagram
🍃 Mud Maid — By Sue and Pete Hill in Cornwall, UK 🇬🇧
Mud Maid changes with the seasons, which is exactly why she is unforgettable. She is part sculpture, part garden, and part sleeping spirit of the woods.
💡 Nerd Fact: Mud Maid was originally supposed to have a fish tail, the Hills first imagined her as a sleeping mermaid, and her body was built over an armature made from spare timber left from Heligan’s Jungle boardwalk.
About and more photos: Mud Maid – Living sculpture by Sue and Pete Hill
🌼 Sidewalk Flower Experiment — By Kindergarten children dropped seeds in the crack of the sidewalk to see what would happen
Never underestimate the power of a seed. A rigid sidewalk suddenly turned into a wild ribbon of color.
Read more about it here!
💡 Nerd Fact: Pavement cracks are basically accidental seedbeds: tiny pockets of soil build up in them, and urban seed-spreading experiments have found that cracks in asphalt can be some of the best places for flowers to establish.
🌀 Portal — By Jon Foreman in Little Milford Woods, Wales 🇬🇧
This piece feels like an invitation to step through the woods differently. Foreman uses found leaves and shape alone to create something halfway between ritual and abstraction.
More by Jon Foreman: The Art of Stones (12 Photos)
💡 Nerd Fact: Jon Foreman’s land art is intentionally temporary — made from natural materials and meant to be reclaimed by weather and time — so the disappearing is part of the artwork, not the failure of it.
🔗 Follow Jon Foreman on Instagram
🌲 Forest Spirit — Artist Unknown
A face emerging from wood is a simple idea on paper, but this one feels ancient and oddly gentle. It turns a tree surface into a character without losing its natural texture.
🌱 Beautiful Love — By Alter OS in Mexico City, Mexico 🇲🇽
Alter OS uses the real tree as the emotional center of the piece, letting the children’s gestures do the rest. It is small, caring, and instantly human.
💡 Nerd Fact: Alter OS literally brands himself “Ilustrador Monumental,” and in interview he says he came up through illegal late-1990s graffiti, so this gentle scene feels like the polished, building-scale descendant of a much rougher street practice.
🔗 Follow Alter OS on Instagram
🦎 Brick Camo — By Paddy Watts
This one is all about observation. Paddy Watts makes the chameleon feel hidden and obvious at the same time, like the wall had been waiting to reveal it.
💡 Nerd Fact: Real chameleons don’t change color mainly to match the wall. Research suggests their dramatic shifts evolved largely for communication, and the fast change itself comes from tuning lattices of tiny guanine nanocrystals in the skin.
🔗 Follow Paddy Watts on Instagram
❤️ Male Cardinal — By Hannah Bullen-Ryner
This piece shows how powerful ephemeral work can be. The careful arrangement of natural materials gives the cardinal texture, warmth, and a fleeting kind of beauty.
More by Hannah Bullen-Ryner: Nature Is Everything! 18 Stunning Artworks
🔗 Follow Hannah Bullen-Ryner on Instagram
🦌 Shika — By Jack Lack in Osaka, Japan 🇯🇵
Shika has the stillness that good animal murals need. The deer feels calm, alert, and completely suited to a theme about quiet coexistence with the natural world.
More by Jack Lack: 6 Unbelievable Animal-Inspired Murals by Jack Lack
💡 Nerd Fact: The title matters here: shika means deer, and Jack Lack explains that in Japan deer are seen as messengers from the spirit world and a bridge between humans and nature. A belief with deep roots in places like Nara, where deer have been protected as divine envoys for over 1,300 years.
🔗 Follow Jack Lack on Instagram
Which one is your favorite?
Parrot mural by Curtis Hylton for UPFEST in Bristol, UK
Street Artist Curtis Hylton
By Curtis Hylton for UPFEST in Bristol, UK.
Photo by David Multicapture
Comments:
Parrot mural by Curtis Hylton for Upfest – Upfest – The Urban Paint Festival in Bristol, UK: https://t.co/xq8gbwoWb3 pic.twitter.com/hc566gaSfK— STREET ART UTOPIA: New Street Art and Graffiti (@traintoutopia) May 13, 2022
