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If you live in Walthamstow, you’ve probably noticed a familiar type of mural appearing in different parts of E17: bright, bold paintings with short poems tucked inside the lines of each image. There’s the rhyming tin of baked beans on St James Street, a lightbulb by Queen’s Road station, splashes of rainbow in Walthamstow Marshes… They are all the work of Angry Dan, a poet and painter whose relentlessly cheerful style in no way matches up with his name. Nine Angry Dan murals have now found their way on to the walls of Walthamstow, eight of which were commissioned for Waltham Forest’s year as London Borough of Culture.
So what is his fixation on limericks all about? ‘A limerick gives you just enough words to explain almost any idea, if you try hard enough. The rhythm and rhyme make them pleasing to the ear but also mean that writing them can be more like a puzzle than a poem. They have it all,’ says Dan.
There’s basically nothing to do right now except walk the empty streets of London, so if you live in E17, tracking down all nine of Angry Dan’s colourful murals is one way to keep it interesting. The artist told Time Out: ‘I really hope they’ll brighten up a few people’s days while they take their daily exercise, because we all need a splash of colour right now.’
Photograph: Angry Dan
Photograph: Angry Dan
Photograph: Angry Dan
Not your kind of thing? Try these virtual art tours instead.
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