Wild Welva [itw] | StreetLove

StreetLove THE ARTIST

Wild Welva gave us the pleasure to answer a few questions for StreetLove.
He grew up in a very small town in the south of Spain and now lives in a close-by city: Huelva in beautiful Andalucia.

The story behind his artist nickname comes from a mix of “Wild” – which in his opinion defines any kind of street art and the ‘wild life’ art theme he explores. Plus the word “Welva” which is an approximation of the ancient arabic name for Huelva, his city: “Welba”.

He is involved in street art for many years, focusing on his own projects and also helping other street artists. He used to work with stencils and paste up.

Talking more precisely about Wild Welva, the whole story started in 2015, at the age of 34.

He wanted to bring wild animals to the cities, in order to rewild our closer environment. He was working with paste up before, so he thought it could be a good idea to paint those wild animals on big paper format and paste them up on the cities’ walls. He started with a bunch of flamingos (many wild flamingos in Spain, close to Huelva, in Marismas del Odiel National Park) that he pasted up in Huelva. A couple of months ago, flamingos started to fly away to Paris, Berlin, Iceland, London and even New York City!

He is doing the work in his studio on his own, but then they are two putting the art pieces on the walls. Big papers are quite difficult to paste for one person.

When he is not working as an artist, he is teaching in a public school so his pro schedule is pretty full!

To promote his work, he is using:
– Instagram – his favorite one: instagram.com/wild_welva
– His website: www.wildwelva.com
– Facebook: facebook.com/WildWelva
– Twitter: twitter.com/wildwelva

StreetLove THE ART

He finds the inspiration in his daily life, his feelings, his fears also, he looks at people around him, or even gives life to some of his dreams. He also takes his inspiration from the books he reads or news he watches. That is only the primary idea that makes him stand up and work on something new. Then, he codifies it using wild animals and symbols.

Years after his start as Wild Welva, we can find his artwork around Spain and Portugal of course, but also: in the USA and Brasil, Netherlands, Belgium, France, the UK, Iceland and Germany.

A bit superstitious, he has upcoming projects but he does not like to talk about them before everything gets under total control. And we do understand but we hope he will let us know soon…

StreetLove THE TECHNIQUE

Which is interesting with his way of putting art pieces on the cities walls is that he likes to modify the urban spaces. And that what we love at StreetLove: when artists plays with their playground!
He is way more interested on modifying and creating specific pieces for concrete spaces than creating regular murals that could be painted on any wall of the world. In this way, he always tries to find a nice and wild environment for his animals rather than a polish wall with no spikes or holes.

To work at his studio, he is using any kind of tools from brushes, pencils and so on to ink and acrylic paint. Same on the streets, he is using specific tools to create his piece, and plays with the environment.
An art piece is about one good month to work at the studio – starting with a Photoshop sketch + a picture of the futur place where the piece will be pasted up, taking all the measures into account 😉
Then he draws and paints on big sheets of paper and this is the longest part of the process… and then time for paste up on the streets – the quickest and the most difficult as well – takes only a few hours.

Any artistic tips you can give away?
Always do what you think you have to do. Follow your instinct.