“Flight” fresco by SowanOne

Two European bee-eaters take flight on the Val d'Arly transformer, capturing the very essence of life in a burst of color. Here, artist SowanOne, aka Vincent Lansade, deploys his unique visual language: a blend of digital fantasy and raw material, an alchemy between the tangible and the ephemeral.

His mural, anchored in a public space, is intended as a dialogue. The flamboyantly colored birds seem to glide across a deep green background, a plant-filled setting woven from spruce branches and wild daffodils. Each spray paint stroke, each shade applied, conveys a vibration, a breath of air. Like an echo of the transience of these migratory birds, the graffiti itself carries within it the promise of the passing of time, of the wind that will one day carry away its pigments.

SowanOne evokes a contemporary mythology where nature and culture intertwine. The influence of street art is evident: in the energy of the movement, in the way the motif integrates with its medium, transforming a simple transformer into a visual manifesto. But behind the power of the gesture also lies a deeper reflection. The European Bee-eater, the bird he has made his own since 2017, has become an emblem. It evokes the blurring of boundaries, the fragile balance of ecosystems, the evanescence of the image in a world saturated with digital flows.

This fresco is alive. Depending on the angle, depending on the light, it transforms. Dawn exalts its contrasts, dusk envelops it in softness. The viewer is invited to gaze through it, to make it their own. Therein lies the power of SowanOne's work: to create a work that, although a mural, never ceases to be in motion.

By blending digital techniques with graffiti tradition, drawing on both the language of lettering and animal representation, the artist inscribes his creation in a dual context. It belongs to the repertoire of street art, but it also interacts with an older tradition, that of naturalist painters who, throughout the centuries, have sought to capture the beauty of the living world. Here, on the walls of Val d'Arly, in La Giettaz-en-Aravis, SowanOne doesn't immortalize nature. He liberates it for us.

Text credits: ©Be on the Crest.

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