Until recently, like in many areas of London, if you walked through the streets of central Brixton after the shops had closed you'd be met by rows of imposing grey steel shutters.
Many businesses rank the protection of their livelihoods higher than any aestetic impact and these ugly looking barricades, whilst offering security, make many of our streets look like barren ghost towns after dark.
Recently however, the drab-looking shutters along the streets of Coldharbour Lane and Atlantic Road in Brixton, South London have been brightened up.
Shops such as Brixton Wholefoods, Atlantic Meat Market, BEM Music and Clear Prints Digital have been transformed with colourful and interesting grafitti art.
The man responsible, Malarky, is a street artist, originally from South London and his work has been featured on shop shutters in Madrid and Barcelona, where he lived until recently.
I think that they are great and bring an interesting dimension to the streets of Brixton. Hopefully some of the other businesses will follow suit.
A few years ago, I wrote on my old blog about an amazing artist I came across when holidaying in Positano, Italy.
His name is Paolo Troilo, he's from Italy and his work still gives me a tingle down my spine whenever I see it. When i came across this video (below) showing him painting I just had to feature him on my blog again.
Paolo Troilo paints with his hands, creating for me the most powerful self portraits I have ever seen.
His work is so physical and emotive and I could never tire of looking at his many paintings, each one telling me a story of anguish, struggle and frustration.
It's interesting to see in the video how he goes about creating something so powerful and using his hands instead of a brush adds to the rawness of his work.
I hope Paolo exhibits in London one day, so I can see more of his work up close. They may look amazing on the screen but look even more mesmerising in real life.
It is still my ambition to own one of his pieces and two years after seeing that painting in Positano, he is still my favourite artist.
Until recently, like in many areas of London, if you walked through the streets of central Brixton after the shops had closed you'd be met by rows of imposing grey steel shutters.
