LUAP paints Love Life, a 12 × 6 m Mural on Batemans Row in Shoreditch, supported by Outside the Zone. The Pink Bear holds a skull with heart-shaped eyes, bringing mortality, choice and the value of time into one image.
Painted directly onto brick, the figure stands against a series of concentric pink bands that pull the eye inward like a target. The composition is deliberately simple, allowing the skull and its black heart-shaped eyes to carry the central tension.
The skull brings mortality directly into the work, while the hearts shift the emphasis towards affection, experience and the way a life is lived. Rather than treating death as the subject in itself, Love Life considers how an awareness of limited time can sharpen the value of the present.
As LUAP puts it, “We hold our life in our own hands and we have the power to shape our life.”
That idea feels particularly immediate in 2020. Lockdown has interrupted routines, postponed plans and changed the way people experience time. Months that might once have been filled with work, travel, relationships and ordinary encounters have instead been shaped by restriction and uncertainty. Against that backdrop, the work takes on an added urgency without becoming specifically about the pandemic.
The target-like structure reinforces that directness. The concentric bands draw the eye towards The Pink Bear and ultimately to the skull, while the exposed brick and distressed areas of paint keep the building physically present within the image. At street level, the scale allows the work to register quickly from across Batemans Row.
Love Life holds mortality and affection together without resolving the tension between them. Time passes regardless. The work asks what we choose to do with it.
Romeo Beckham with LUAP's Pink Bear mural Love Life
