Bobby Hunter Brings His Colorful Artwork To A Wheatpaste Near You

This week I got the chance to meet up with a newer Philly street artist whose work has really grabbed my attention! That is the Bridesburg born-and-raised, self taught artist named Bobby Hunter, who installed the wheatpaste documented in this post at 5th and South Streets yesterday.

Over email, I asked Bobby to tell us more about how he got into art, what artists have inspired him, and what made him take the leap into street art:

“I first got into art when I was in middle school, but drifted away from it over time. As I got older (early 20s) I was struggling with my mental health, and needed an outlet to express my feeling so I got back into it. A little while later I decided to start taking it more seriously and devoting mostly all of my time to art. I didn’t go to school for art, so I pretty much just tried a bunch of stuff until I arrived at a style that I felt really suited me. A few artists that inspire me are KAWS, Gabriele Bruns, and Keith Haring. As far as how I got into street art, it really started because I wanted to share my art with as many people as possible. I love the city of Philadelphia, I was born and raised here, so I wanted to share it with the people of the city. My work is really bright and colorful, so my hope was that the colors in my work could positively affect the people who see it. It was a bit of trial and error when I first started pasting up, but I really just took a leap and went for it.”

“The piece I installed yesterday was hand drawn, and hand painted with acrylic paint on large plotting paper,” Bobby responded when I asked him about his new installation. “From there, I mixed together mod podge and water, applied it to the wall with a brush, and just slowly unrolled the piece onto the sticky surface. As far as inspiration for this piece; and the few others I’ve put up lately, it has really been about wanting to incorporate some larger scale work into my paste up repertoire. I feel like this style of large bordered work was not something I had been seeing much of on the streets, so I wanted to try it out. I feel like it has the feeling of a piece that would be framed and indoors, so I think it’s really fun to bring that outside. Stylistically, it is really just about choosing fun colors that I think look nice together.”

Excited to see where Bobby takes his art!

Oh and p.s., the narwhal wheatpaste seen in that last photo is by the incredible artist (and person) FaithsFunnn. We interviewed FaithsFunnn back in 2018, and you can read more about her work here!