People love they can now meet under Liz, says supersized artist
ARTIST Pure Evil has spoken about how he painted an enormous Liz Taylor mural that is helping reinvent Wales’ second city.
The 48-year-old’s work is the most visible sign of a renaissance in Swansea, which has long had a reputation for being rundown and grey.
Now it is dotted with work by the likes of Pete Fowler, Photini Masi and James Burgess while new galleries, theatres and tech start-ups have opened.
“If you’ve got a grey area full of concrete and it’s run down, a bit of colour brightens the place up a bit,” the painter, whose real name is Charles Uzzell-Edwards, said.
“They can be a celebration like the Liz Taylor one – I wanted that to be a celebration with the Liz Taylor and Richard Burton thing – but I have other ones that have a more political slant.”
The Liz picture shows a whitefaced image of the star with a red tear running down the side of the Volcano theatre.
“People enjoy the fact they now have a landmark,” Charles said.
“They can say, ‘Let’s meet under Liz.’
“There is also an element of surprise with pieces like that going up in somewhere like Swansea.
“You expect it in Shoreditch, but not so much in Swansea.”
Charles is a pal of Banksy and the son of painter John Uzzell-Edwards and descendant of saint and author Sir Thomas More.
He said: “I spent two days up a cherry-picker working on it, I’ve not spent that much time on a cherry-picker before.
“A lot of people who have been creating murals at the moment are going bigger and bigger, you’re seeing a movement toward vast-scale pieces.
“You’ll be getting more people likely to do those large-scale pieces because people like it.”
The size of his Liz meant Charles, from Cwmtwrch, did not use stencils.
“You get to do it freehand, you can cover more width and area if you’re doing it free hand,” he said.
“It’s not practical to use stencils on something that size.
“It’s just working out the scale of it all. It’s tricky because if you’re up a scaffold you cannot really see what you’re doing so you have to step back all the time.”
More of Charles’ work may soon be seen in Wales.
“There is talk about me doing something in Cardiff,” he said.