Most graffiti artists never get the chance to paint a human figure measuring a staggering 100,000 square feet, but most of them aren’t working directly on massive mountainsides, either. Swiss artist Guillame Legros, better known as Saype, creates temporary scenes in the grass using a special biodegradable paint he developed himself after a year of experimentation. A paint gun helps him spay large quantities of pigment at a time onto grass cut extra short to make each work last as long as it can.

The rate of grass growth and the weather determine whether each ‘fresco,’ as Sayre calls them, lasts just a couple weeks or perhaps just over a month. The 2016 piece ‘Un Grand Homme,’ depicting a man in lederhosen lounging on an Alpine cliff in Leysin, Switzerland, broke world records for its size, while the 2018 piece ‘Present by Future’ created for the Eurockéennes Festival in Belfort, France is his most complex work yet.

“Fascinated by the philosophy and the questions which we could call ‘existential,’ his painting explores, most of the time, problems around the human being,” reads his bio. “His work is for him a way to share his vision of the world and invites us to wonder about our deep nature, our spirit, our place on earth and in the society.”

Swiss street art duo NEVERCREW recently completed ‘Sensing Machine No.3,’ a mural outside the historic Paris institution of street art known as Le M.U.R., depicting a whale reflecting the city. The eye-catching piece is the latest in a series of thoughtful large-scale works of art examining the interplay between nature and our built environments, often from the perspective of the damage we’ve done in the form of pollution and species extinction.

“NEVERCREW’s work focuses on the relationship between mankind and nature and on the relationship between mankind and the system, in particular on the effects of human attitudes on the environment, on social injustices and on the relationship between the concept and the forms of “systems” and an essential, natural, human and animal truth,” they explain.

Christian Rebecchi and Pablo Togni began working together in 1996, and these themes have emerged from their work ever since. They don’t just aim to create a pretty image with each piece; instead, they seek a dialogue with the surroundings, both in the form of human residents of the city and the urban environment itself. They see the surfaces they paint on, and the elements that surround them, as important elements of each graphic composition.

Imagery is often repeated as the artists draw from visual components in their catalogue of past works. Whales come up pretty often. Though this animal’s own experiences may seem far from those of humans, NEVERCREW explains, they’re part of our collective imagination and linked to the past and present history of civilization.

“The history of the relationship between mankind and cetaceans is in fact particularly emblematic of what is still the relationship between systems’ policies and natural resources. The whale, for NEVERCREW, brings with it all its history, the excessive power of industry, exploitation, dehumanization, pollution, while maintaining a strong empathic and communicative value as a living being in an absolute, almost iconic and decontextualized sense.”

Treating the Earth like a canvas and natural objects like rocks, sticks, sand and ice as art materials, we alter the natural environment to reflect ourselves and our own artistic impulses – even if only temporarily, until these works of land-based art are erased by nature itself.

Animated Land Art by Paul Johnson

For his ‘Earthworks in Motion’ series, artist Paul Johnson takes inspiration from such legendary land artists as Andy Goldsworthy and Jim Denevan, using some of the same techniques but crafting them into stop-motion animations filmed in parks and nature preserves around Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota.

Ash Dome by David Nash

In 1977, sculptor David Nash secretly planted and trained a circle of 22 ash trees to grow into a shape resembling a vortex on an area of land in Wales. 40 years later, they’ve grown enough for the shape to be discernible. Nash says that at the time, during the Cold War and other unrest, planting something that couldn’t be properly enjoyed until the 21st century seemed like a leap of faith.

Van Gogh’s ‘Olive Trees’ Planted in a Field

Vincent Van Goh’s masterpiece painting ‘Olive Trees,’ completed in 1889, comes to life – literally – in a Minneapolis field as artist Stan Herd uses nature as his canvas and paints. The piece was viewable from the air during autumn 2015 and then mowed down in concentric circles reminiscent of Van Gogh’s painting strokes.

Seven Magic Mountains by Ugo Rondinone

Each of Swiss artist Ugo Rondinone’s ‘Seven Magic Mountains’ made of stacked limestone stands between 30 and 35 feet tall painting in dayglo yellow, red, pink, silver and other colors. They’re set just south of Las Vegas as a monumental work of land art, installed in May 2016 and due to remain in place until May 2018, so there’s still time to see it in person.

Snow Murals by Simon Beck

Simon Beck uses snowshoes to manually imprint dazzling patterns and shapes into snowy fields, photographs them from above and then allows them to be blown away, covered by more snow or trampled. It can take up to 5,000 steps an hour for 10 hours at a time to complete an average piece.

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In strikingly well-composed, vividly colored scenes resembling abstract paintings, J. Henry Fair’s aerial photographs of toxic waste and industrial activity on Earth give us an uncomfortable look at the cost of human progress. In fact, the images seem unreal: how could the damage caused by industrial pollution be so strangely beautiful? Tar sands, mountaintop removal mining, fertilizer runoff, coal ash, factory farming and devastating oil spills aren’t exactly the stuff that stunning art is usually made of, but Fair is no ordinary artist, forcing us to face the duality of what we’ve created.

Shooting these scenes from the air gives us a perspective we don’t normally have, as if we’re flying over them in person, reckoning with the damage that comes with our consumption of fossil fuels, large-scale farmed meat, chemicals and other commodities that do significant harm to the environment in their sourcing and manufacturing.

Coal combustion waste may not be pretty, but its splashes of rust and bronze against its black and white surroundings are undeniably striking. Some heavy metals, like ‘red mud’ bauxite waste from aluminum production, are almost floral in their contrast to green.  Oil from the BP Deepwater Horizon spill is mesmerizing in its flowing red ribbons against the cobalt blue of the Gulf of Mexico waters. Phospho-gypsum fertilizer waste is a brilliant blue-green, like a gemstone; it contains both uranium and radium, piled dangerously close to drinking water aquifers.

“What interests me about this series is its essential irony and hope,” he says. “The thinking person participating in the modern world understands that all of us are living unsustainably, the impending consequences on our economy are real and significant. But in fact, with a little effort and luck, these limitations could be overcome, ensuring a secure future. And so we must hope, as we are all invested. My goal is to produce beautiful images that stimulate an aesthetic response, and thus dialog. If the pictures are not beautiful, the viewer will not stop to consider them.”

These images and many more are available in the form of a hardcover book set to be released on July 6th, ‘Industrial Scars: The Hidden Costs of Consumption.’

Banksy may be the most famous street artist addressing topics like capitalism, war, the refugee crisis and environmental degradation, but he’s far from the only one. These political works by a wide range of international artists call attention to the ravages of the palm oil industry, police brutality, climate change, rapid industrialization and human trafficking with powerful visuals in public places.

Ernest Zacharevic, Isaac Cordal & Strok: Splash and Burn

In western Indonesia, on the island of Sumatra, the palm oil industry is ravaging the forests, cruelly killing and displacing species like the orangutan. The ‘Splash and Burn’ project, curated by Ernest Zacharevic, aims to call attention to these issues through art installations by international creatives. Ernest’s own contribution is a gut-wrenching mural of the forest on fire as an orangutan tries to escape, while Strok’s shows how workers attempt to rescue orangutans clinging to life in mostly-destroyed forests. Isaac Cordal, who’s known for his street installations of miniature figures, shows recovery efforts in action, along with a striking representation of those who get rich on the industry.

Sophia Dawson: Police Brutality

Brooklyn artist Sophia Dawson has painted many hard-hitting murals in her own city, including the two shown here, which say “We Want an Immediate End to Police Brutality and Murder of Black People’ and educate the public on their rights. “I endeavor to create a narrative art that addresses human and political struggle,” says Dawson. “In doing so my aim is to convey the true stories and experiences of oppressed people from political movements in ways that more broadly form, shade and convey the individual and collective injustices they face.”

NeverCrew: Environmental Tragedies

The Swiss street artist duo known as NeverCrew (Christian Rebecchi and Pablo Togni) created a series of public murals addressing climate change, women asylum seekers and other issues throughout 2016. Of ‘Black Machine,’ the image of the polar bear covered in oil, the artists say “Playing with the line of sight of the forced point of view from the sidewalk and inspiring us to the theater (on whose wall was made the painting,) we decided to work on the idea of representation intended in a broad sense as portrayal, as performance and as a figuration of reality. We used direct references to the theatrical context to define a ‘real’ proportion and a starting point, but we wanted to move the attention on global warming related to human habits. We have then developed these issues trying to evoke the position (and responsibility) of man in a delicate balance, into the ecosystem, and so the choice points of view, of real awareness and the idea of a passive condition in a system.”

Sr. X: Capitalism Critiques

Spanish artist Sr. X completed this rooftop mural on an old billboard platform on London’s Great Eastern Street, with a pointed critique that requires no further explanation.

Pejac: The World Going Down the Drain

The world threatens to melt through a storm drain into the sewer below in this Santander, Spain street piece by Spanish artist Sylvestre Santiago, better known as Pejac.

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