Street Art Walk 1

Looking in LARGE is really worthwhile.

Back when I blipped that "panoramic" bus shelter (a few days ago) I told you that I'd display some of the local Blue Mountains street art. In doing so I'd quite forgotten just how much of it there was to show and so I have decided to make these blips a kind of organised archive.

The Upper Blue Mountains towns and villages encompass a population of approximately 26,000 people but the sheer amount of artistic endeavour which is attempted seems out of all proportion with the size of the community.

I have shown you the first of many bus shelters, given you a first glimpse of the "Butterfly Walk" and posted some of the murals under Katoomba railway station. But here is the first of several blips I shall put up from Katoomba's "Street Art Walk".

Beverly Place is an inauspicious laneway which serves the back of a series of business premises facing "Katoomba Street's" main shopping drag. It was very much a "backstage" sort of place until in 2013 a group of artists organised some funding, obtained permission from the property owners and began painting a series of huge murals. It was finished in June of last year.

Unfortunately, on a normal commercial day, direct access to the works is impeded by fire escapes, garbage bins, trucks, delivery vehicles, packing crates, parked cars, wire fences and general mess. While I have done my best to be faithful to the literal detail and spirit of these murals, I have had to make certain compromises in order to overcome the harsh, prevailing conditions and get around the various elements, blocking the way for viewers.

By the time I will have blipped a good selection of what there is to see, some of the images will have been cropped to prevent unsightly items from being too great an annoyance, some will have become stitched panoramas in order to fit the works into coherent entries and some will have had their colours slightly compensated or modified due to the shadows and/or glare and/or stray sunshine highlights which prevailed at the time that I shot them.

In any event, here are the first few street art works belonging to the "Street Art Walk".