Internationally renowned street artists such as Bansky, M-city, C215, Eelus and others are traveling to London this weekend (3rd, 4th and 5th May) to participate in a street art battle in a location which will remain undisclosed until Friday morning. This is an open event (with free admission) and anyone lucky enough to to participate in this festival can spray their own art within the designated areas. More info and location (when available) can be seen here.

From (southern California) Graffiti artist to pop surrealist, Greg “Craola” Simkins is an incredible artist without limits. With his cartoonist sensibility, designer approach and a unique vision Simkins brings a fresh new style into a world of bizarre (sometimes scary) creatures, curiously playful characters living among the fauna of some strange worlds he creates for them. His inspiration behind these odd characters and worlds comes from an interesting fusion of old/ retro cartoons, books, animal documentaries, and music. This mix enables him to fully realize his dreams and so bring his wonderful stories to the surface of each multi layed painting. Simkins’ approach is equally interesting and could be considered unconventional; each piece is subject to a long and involved process, much like the work of a designer. This approach is just one of the many things that makes his art fresh, unique and extremely appealing.

Over the past few years Simkins work has appeared in galleries all over the country and is much sought after by collectors. Simkins is published regularly in magazines such as Juxtapoz, High fructose, Beautiful Decay, Concrete Wave. After the jump you can see more of his utterly fascinating worlds, along with a must see video in which he talks about his art, sketching ideas and using ‘dirty water’. more…

Blacksheep

Vertigo | Zombie

Collabro

Siloette is a fine artist and illustrator currently residing in Los Angeles. She creates outstanding and ornate pieces in spraypaint, acrylic and ink. Her paintings consist (mostly) of female portraiture - these have a flowing, ornate, bold and richly colorful “modern Art Nouveau” style about them. Siloette’s art has been commissioned for commercials, apparel, snowboards and billboard advertisements and more. View Siloette’s online portfolio here.

The Day Everything Changed 32 x 48 in. acrylic on canvas

Ok, so are you looking for a vocation from reality? Well, Anthony Ausgang’s super charged paintings will certainly buy you the ticket. Hollywood-based Ausgang is a “Lowbrow” artist or “hyper surreal cartoonist”, who creates stunning paintings that cover a vast range of expression: from Hot Rod and Custom Car paintings to Rembrandt covered graffiti art. This incredible breadth of interest has ultimately led him to formulate his paintings in computer softwares and complete them on traditional media. With both aerosol and brush in hand, his canvas’ are brilliantly colored with superficially cheery cartoon characters. These exist in a parallel universe where cats are descended from humans and cartoons are documentaries - which explore important issues of gender and subjects as animal rights. more…

This Caravan was painted during the preparations of the “Graffiti Stories”-Exhibition in Sète

“Whole Car” painting

These fantastic paintings are from the Graffiti Stories events happening right now in two locations in France. The Show runs till the 13th of January, 2008, in the MIAM in Séte (Musée des arts Modestes) and the Abbaye d’Auberives near Dijon. The exhibition there will run June 30th, 2007 to September 19th, 2007.

Artists include Alëxone—Paris; Esmaeil Bahrani—Téhéran; Dzus—Kaohsiung; David Ellis—New York; Maya Hayuk—New York; Jonone—Paris; Nunca—Sao Paulo; Reach—Taipei; Zonenkinder—Mainz. All walls in the museum have been painted by the artists.

The Caravan piece (top) painted during the preparations of the “Graffiti Stories” is amongst my favorites from the showing so far. There is, however, plenty of talent to be seen throughout the Zonenkinder collective, see here: www.zonenkindercollective.de.vu.

We are entering into an incredibly productive phase of urban street art, where talented artists like Brazilian Claudio Ethos are creating stunning and dramatic artworks. Ethos’ artworks contain sharp social commentary obviously inspired from the “sprawling metropolis” of Sao Paulo - the new “shrine to graffiti”. While many street artists today prefer the stencil method, Ethos prefers to paint using freehand style to create these unique figurative paintings. They would indeed enrich the surrounding of any living space.

You can find most of Claudio’s work at ekosystem.org. Unfortunately, street art is usually short lived, gone within days or certainly weeks after it is completed. The only permanent record of these works are photographs. Here are [28] more photos for the record, capturing ethos’ spectacular ephemeral pieces… more…