Peachzz mural lands Number 1 spot for Best Global Street Art in June
Sheffield street artist, Peachzz, has landed the Number 1 spot for Street Art Cities' best murals in the world for June 2024.
The stunning mural, which adorns the side of the Cubo building, overlooking Pound's Park in Sheffield City Centre, was unveiled last month and has been praised by Sheffielders.
The artwork itself, inspired by the local Sheffield canal systems and waterways, is named 'Reverie' - a daydream, becoming lost in the beauty of your surroundings -a fitting tribute as the mural was originally commissioned to celebrate Sheffield's Festival of the Outdoors.
It features two fishing birds, a kingfisher and a heron and is Peachzz's largest mural to date, measuring 25.5 x 9 meters (225 square meters) as well as being Sheffield's tallest piece of street art.
The world's largest urban art community, Street Art Cities celebrates the most popular street art across the world. They host both a dedicated website and app, that have been designed for avid street art hunters, encouraging users to explore both their own cities, as well as those they visit.
Having clinched the top spot for June, 'Reverie' will now be entered into Street Art Cities' Best Global Street Art of Year, for 2024.
On creating the mural in Sheffield, Peachzz (who's real name is Megan Rusell) said: "It was an incredible feeling painting something so tall in my town. I absolutely adore creating large-scale artwork its when I’m at my happiest.
"Sheffield holds a special place in my heart, and I will forever cherish the moments shared with passersby who stopped to say hello. The overwhelming support from the city has been incredibly uplifting, the people here are wonderful.
The mural took 10 straight days of work to complete, and was created with support from street artist ENSO, who Peachzz also credits for helping to "keep me sane throughout the process".
photo credit Street Art Atlas
Sheffield street art inspiration
A graduate of Sheffield Hallam University, Peachzz has worked on commissions across the world and built a reputation for applying her expressive style, with hints of realism and bold colour palettes, to large scale murals. With such a growing international profile, we asked -What is it about Sheffield that inspired you to get into street art?
Peachzz replied: "When I arrived in Sheffield, one of the first things I noticed was all the art! Sheffield has such a rich history in street art so I had a keen interest in being involved with it. And so, me and a few of my friends who were on my Uni course decided to go and paint some of the abandoned buildings in Sheffield and that's where it all began. They were such magic times."
'Reverie' isn't the only Sheffield mural Peachzz has completed in 2024, having unveiled another large scale piece next to Walkley Library back in March. Depicting another vibrant nature scene featuring a blackbird and nest of chicks against a Peak District backdrop she was inspired by her own experience of adopting Sheffield as her home.
Describing the piece she said: "The themes around this wall are of nature and home. Sheffield has one of the highest numbers of students coming to university and then settling here, I always found that a profound fact about this city and I am one of those people.
"The city is so full of nature being one of the greenest cities in Europe holding 4.5 million trees and with the peaks 5 minutes down the road it's easy to see why I painted this familiar garden bird nesting with the national park peaking in the background"
Peachzz/Megan will soon be lending her talents to another mural too, bookending her work in Walkley which is part of a neighbourhood initiative to inject more vibrancy into the area, that has been coordinated by Zest Centre.
To see more of Peachzz's work in Sheffield, you can view a gallery of her murals over on the Street Art Sheffield website here and if you're interested in which other Sheffield artists and pieces of artwork inspire her, she's mapped her favourite on Google Map here.
Photo credit Steel City Snapper
Lick of Paint Fest is coming
Aside to lending her talents to many amazing mural projects in Sheffield and beyond, Megan is also one of the co-founders of Lick of Paint, alongside fellow Sheffield artist Alastair Flindall (Neck of Wood Studios).
A brand-new street art festival for Sheffield, they plan to launch fully in 2025, with around 40-50 local and international artists taking part, creating art installations across the city.
For now they're busy working behind the scenes to put plans in place, but they do have a couple of things lined up for 2024 in the pipeline. Follow them for more info on their social channels @LickofPaintFest. 