His Lakota mural, painted alongside a series of bold, shape-based posters, does exactly that — filling the city with vibrancy for no reason other than joy itself. “Colour’s everywhere and nowhere at the same time,” he says. “It’s in everything we touch, but people don’t see it anymore. They’re so used to black, grey, silver — all these safe choices. I just wanted to remind people what a bit of colour can do.”

And there’s no better place for that reminder than Bristol. The South West city has its own long history with street art and the DIY culture it comes from — a culture that, like the city itself, is learning to navigate the pressures of change.

“When I first moved here, it was so cheap that I could just experiment,” he says. “You could make whatever you wanted and not worry about rent. It loosened me up.” Now, he admits, that version of Bristol is fading. Lockdown brought an influx of people from elsewhere, chasing the creative energy the city is known for. “Rents went through the roof. Pubs started closing down. Flats started going up.”

With a growing commercial landscape culminating in less colour, Mr Penfold’s may not be inherently political, but in Bristol, it is poignant.

What was your route into art — how did it all begin for you? Was creativity something that felt accessible when you were younger?

I had what I’d call an artistically privileged upbringing. My dad was a screen printer and an artist, so we always had people coming through the house that he was working with — proper, prestigious artists too. As a kid, I hated it. He’d be making these abstract prints and I just wanted to draw cartoon characters, superheroes and bikes.

Art was always encouraged, though. My dad and mum both loved music, so creativity was just part of the environment. I’m dyslexic and I really struggled in school, so art became my outlet — the one thing I felt confident in when I wasn’t confident in anything else. It gave me a sense of purpose early on, even if I didn’t yet see it as a path.

And were you able to explore that through hobbies outside of school — like skateboarding or graffiti?

Yeah, totally. I started skateboarding when I was about eleven, and painting graffiti around the same time. It was through those two worlds that I started discovering styles I actually liked, rather than just making stuff for the sake of it.

When you’re a kid, art’s something you do, not something you like. But through skateboarding and graffiti I started to think, “Oh, this is cool. I want to hang this on my wall. I want to make stuff that fits into this world.”

There’s such a deep link between the two — both are subcultures built by adults who never really had to grow up. That big kid mentality was a huge part of what drew me in. It showed me that you could keep that same sense of play and still make something real out of it.

Who or what shaped your early visual language? I see flashes of late-’80s and early-’90s references — bold lines, hard-edge colour, that Memphis-style rhythm — does that era resonate with you?

I think a lot of that era seeped in without me realising it. I was born in ’87 and I’ve got three older brothers, so I grew up surrounded by their tastes — loads of 80s Americana, early 90s culture, TV shows like Saved by the Bell and Fresh Prince, that whole colourful, playful world. My brother Matt was a bit of a grunge kid, into Nirvana and skate culture, so that fed in too.

When I started really getting into art for myself, I was about sixteen and on a skate trip to Barcelona. That’s when I first saw these big paste-ups and character-based murals — early street art before it was even called that. Artists like D*Face, Flying Förtress, London Police, PEZ… it blew my mind that art didn’t have to be about lettering. It could be about shape, character, repetition.

I discovered the Memphis style later on, after I’d already been making work in that vein. Someone pointed it out to me and I was like, oh right, that’s what you call it. I love that movement — those Milan designers who moved to the States when plastics were being developed, suddenly making all this bright, mad furniture. It’s bold, graphic and fun, and I think that spirit — not taking design too seriously — has always stuck with me.

You’ve made murals, prints, installations and even painted cars. What makes a car such an interesting surface or setting for your work?

I was asked to do the first car and just realised the shape of the car dictates what I paint. You can’t really plan it out — they’re all so bendy and wobbly and bumpy that you have to go with the flow. So all the cars I do are freestyled. I make them up as I go, and I like that I never really know how they’re going to look at the end.

It’s become a bit of a ricochet thing — you do one, someone sees it, and then they want one too. I’ve done quite a few now, mostly through a garage outside Cambridge called Type 2 Detectives. They specialise in Porsche and VW builds and restoration work. A lot of them end up as show cars — old, fancy Porsches that go to places like Silverstone or Goodwood — so they’re kind of art pieces rather than cars people actually drive every day.

Bristol has been your base for a while now. How has the city — and its street-art heritage — shaped the way you approach public work?

When I first moved here about eleven years ago, Bristol was so cheap that it gave me freedom to experiment. I didn’t have that stress of needing to make money from art straight away, which meant I could just make what I wanted and enjoy it. It loosened me up, made me a lot freer with what I make.

It’s not even just the visual side of the city — it’s the people. There are so many creatives living here, and everyone’s social, so there’s this real buzz. That atmosphere definitely influenced me when I first arrived.

There’s always been this anti-corporate, do-it-yourself spirit in Bristol’s mural culture. How do you navigate that as someone who works publicly but also collaborates on big-scale projects like this one?

It’s interesting because being a professional — and at times quite a corporate artist — can be difficult here. I really appreciate the DIY, anti-corporate spirit of Bristol, but at the end of the day, you’ve still got to make a living.

Sometimes someone will ask you to do something and expect it for free because you love your job. That’s the tricky part. You have to find a balance. If a project’s really cool, I’ll do it for free, but if it’s big or strenuous, then I want to be paid. It totally depends on the client — some want you to do it for love, others are happy to pay properly. You’ve just got to pick and choose your battles.

You’ve been painting here through a few eras of Bristol street art — what’s changed since you started creating here?

I’ve got well old, mate. I’m eleven years older than I was when I moved here — a lot’s changed in me and in the city. When I first arrived, there was a pub called The Bell, and you could go there any week and it’d be full of all the musicians and artists. It sounds like a really crusty version of Studio 54 in New York, right? That was the energy. I don’t really do that anymore.

Lockdown changed everything. Prices skyrocketed. People from London and outside of Bristol started moving here because of what the city had to offer. I think people reassessed where they lived during that time, and Bristol — being this creative, left-leaning, anti-establishment kind of bubble — became really desirable. It changed loads, man.

A lot of my friends have moved out now, gone to the countryside, had kids. I’m more reclusive, mostly in the studio. So maybe it’s not that Bristol’s changed — maybe I have. But I still love it here. It’s the people that make the city.

What’s your favourite thing about living and creating in Bristol?

My friends, definitely. I love the people here. I love the size of the city too — it’s a big small city, or a small big city, whichever way you want to put it. There’s a real buzz. There’s always stuff going on, sometimes too much stuff going on. It’s easy to get distracted here if you’re not careful.

I like that it’s got the same kind of energy as London in some ways, but without the loneliness. You can walk down the street and bump into people you know every day. That’s what I like — it feels connected. I’ve lost a lot of creative mates to London over the years, but I never wanted to stay there myself. I did six months and thought, nah, fuck this. Bristol just feels like home now.

When you paint outdoors, do you think about audience differently? What do you want a passer-by to take from your work that a gallery visitor might not?

Yeah — if it’s shit, everyone’s going to see it. I went through a period when I was younger where I definitely pandered to my audience, and it really ripped my soul apart. I wasn’t in a good place, and that was just before I moved to Bristol. That move was about starting fresh.

Now I live by the ethic that if I think it’s good and I like it, that’s all that matters. You have to trust that other people will see something in it too. If I go paint a wall and start thinking about what the audience wants, I’m not painting what’s true to me. You can see that in people’s work — the difference between someone who’s making what they believe in and someone who’s just feeding their audience.

It’s the same as music. Some artists find a formula that works and just keep going back to it. I’ve upset my audience plenty of times by changing things, but I think they’ve got to get used to it. I’d rather keep evolving than repeat myself for the sake of it.

Let’s talk about the BUILDHOLLYWOOD collaboration — the Lakota site is huge. How did you approach the space, and what story were you hoping to tell through the mix of mural and posters?

The idea was simple: colour and art for the sake of it. Some of the billboards have the line “adding a bit of colour to our lives” across them. It’s based on this report I read that showed how the amount of colour in our lives has been dropping since the 1970s and 80s — in cars, in branding, in clothing, in the way people decorate their houses. Everything’s becoming more monochrome.

So the plan was just to put big, bold shapes and nice colours out there — not political, not wishy-washy, just something that makes people feel good. It’s a response to that greyness we see everywhere, especially in cities. Sometimes you just need to walk past something bright for no reason other than that it looks nice.

The project’s rooted in that study showing the world is literally losing colour — from cars and tech to architecture. What drew you to that idea, and how does it connect to your work?

Bristol’s a bit different because people still paint their houses bright colours — that’s artists adding colour to the world, how it should be. That’s what this project’s about for me. I didn’t want to do anything political or wishy-washy, but I also didn’t want to do nothing. I just thought: how can I put shapes and colour on the street, but explain why I’m doing it?

It’s not a protest. I’ve never really thought of my work as anything other than eye candy. It’s there to make people look at something and go, “I like that — I don’t know why, but I do.” If I walk past a nice colour, it gives me a buzz. It’s good for the soul. I’ve literally got albums on my phone full of colours I’ve spotted — bins, lampposts, whatever. The world just needs more of that.

There’s a trend towards minimalism and uniform design — do you think creative work is at risk of becoming too sanitised or repetitive?

Yeah, I think so. You see artists get so big that they become brands. Their work’s everywhere, and after a while you just go numb to it. The same thing happens across everything — we’re all glued to our phones, seeing the same visuals over and over again.

I try not to oversaturate myself for that reason. Sometimes I’ll think about painting another wall and decide not to. I’ve got enough in Bristol — I’d rather surprise people. It’s a bit of supply-and-demand thinking, keeping people wanting more.

And yeah, repetition’s a big part of it now. There are so many more creatives out there, and everyone’s influenced by everyone else. When I first got into this, it felt like there were only four of us — obviously there weren’t, but it was smaller. Now it’s a saturated world. I like to think my stuff’s original, but I know it’s heaped with influence from the people who came before me.

And finally, what’s a piece of art that really moved you?

That’s a hard one, but I remember seeing a Rothko for the first time and almost having a panic attack. It was such a strong reaction — unsettling but powerful. Even though I might not have liked it in the traditional sense, it made me feel something I couldn’t ignore. That’s the power of art for me. You don’t always have to understand it — it just hits you.