CCC's Street Art Contest # 307 - Women and more women - 7thPencil & Laylas Murals - Alcantara, Portugal

Good evening, friends!

Welcome to another post in the Street Art community!

How’s your week starting off? I hope it’s going well. I had a pretty hectic weekend, and I wasn’t able to finish everything I’d set out to do. Let’s see if I can make a little more progress on my to-do list this week and finish up a lot of the tasks that have been piling up.

But I won’t bore you any further with these personal matters. I might talk a little more about them in other posts this week—maybe as early as tomorrow’s, when I’ll pick another birthday celebrant to share three songs.

Last week, I shared here in this community a bit about the enormous mural in the Alcântara neighborhood, which was painted by a group of artists called the WOM collective. The project, as I’ve mentioned before, aims to promote and showcase performing arts, as well as murals created entirely by women. Through this initiative, the artists also want to showcase their positivity and ability to come together for the common good, producing high-quality work with the potential to transform an area that was previously just a sterile white wall.

Today, I’d like to share two works located on the far left of the mural I told you about last week. The mural is on Rua do Rio Seco and faces one of the oldest parts of Alcântara.

I used to walk down this street much more often when I was still a student, because a friend’s house—where a group of classmates, myself included, would spend our afternoons studying together—was right here.

I miss those days. We thought student life was tough, but what we didn’t know—even though our elders often told us—was that once we started working, we’d often find ourselves wishing we were still in school!

The piece on the far left was created by 7thPencil. It’s a true work of art, with its striking interplay of tones and saturations, which, combined with the geometry that runs through it, bursts onto the scene and leaves no one indifferent. The piercing gaze in the image used stares right at us, almost as if it were real!

The second piece, which comes right after it, despite having a completely different style—and being less abstract—makes much greater use of contrasts, though in a less dual-tonal way. Sensuality, viewed differently in each piece, radiates from both works of art. This second piece was painted by Laylas Murals.

I hope you enjoyed these two pieces that I’m presenting to you here today. Both center on women but take completely different approaches, reflecting the multiculturalism of the group of artists who came together to leave such a striking mark on the parish of Alcântara.