Famous for his large-scale black and white depictions of animals on city walls around the world, ROA, a hugely talented Belgian street artist from Ghent, brings the creatures which inhabit the fringes of human society back to the metropolis to expose the natural beauty in the cycle of life and death. Growing up in the eighties the artist had modest artistic beginnings, painting animals on abandoned buildings and warehouses in the isolated industrial areas of his hometown. Today, Roa’s animals may be found slumbering on the sides of semi derelict buildings and peering out from shop shutters in city streets all across the world from New York to Berlin and Warsaw to Paris. The animals and skeletons that he paints become a part of the environment that he puts them in, to the point that you can’t imagine them not being there. ROA’s work celebrates death and sheds light on creatures that are treated with scorn. Still on the graffiti circuit, today he is is also producing works for gallery shows on scrap metal and found wood.
