Wild Encounters (8 Photos)

A straw bear towers over children in Japan, a fox appears in the shape of a broken branch, and bright birds rise above a market in Bogotá. These eight works put animals in unexpected places, from a painted gap in the pavement to a tiny arrangement of found pieces on the ground.

More: Wildlife! (8 Photos)

🐻 A Bear to Wrestle — Wara Art Festival in Niigata, Japan 🇯🇵

Children meet a bear many times their size, with one reaching up to its straw muzzle. Made for the 2019 Wara Art Festival at Uwasekigata Park, the sculpture was part of a collaboration between local residents and students from Musashino Art University. That year’s theme invited visitors to imagine unlikely encounters, including sumo-wrestling a bear. Rice straw gives the bear its thick, shaggy coat. The temporary exhibition ran from August 25 to October 31, 2019.

💡 Nerd Fact: The giant animals begin as wooden frames rather than solid bundles of straw. For the festival, students and volunteers use techniques borrowed from thatched-roof construction and basket weaving to build their rice-straw coverings.

🔗 Wara Art Festival on Instagram

🦊 Tree Fox — By Syd of The Stencil Shed in Wiltshire, UK 🇬🇧

A broken piece of wood becomes a fox looking out from a tree. The grain follows its muzzle, while jagged edges suggest ears and fur. Part of Syd’s Green Graffiti project, the work adds paint to dead wood, using the shape already there as the starting point.

💡 Nerd Fact: Syd started Green Graffiti in 2021 after feeling out of place painting large city murals. Moving the work into the countryside let him continue his stencil experiments in surroundings where he felt more at home.

🔗 The Stencil Shed

🐦 Aves de Bogotá — By Mantra in Bogotá, Colombia 🇨🇴

Bright birds fill the narrow side of a tall building, rising above the market roofs and shopfronts below. The yellow, blue and red plumage stands out against a softly painted green background. Mantra painted Aves de Bogotá freehand for Idartes in December 2017.

🔗 Mantra’s website

🐺 Wolf and Pup — By Nikolaj Arndt

A wolf leans toward a pup in a painted opening in the pavement. Cracked edges and shaded rock give the flat drawing its depth, while real pedestrians continue along the street behind it. From this viewpoint, the two animals seem to occupy different levels of the same small patch of road.

🔗 Nikolaj Arndt on Instagram

🐅 Le Tigre — By Dave Baranes in Courtenay, France 🇫🇷

The tiger rests its front paws on a painted break in the wall, with the building’s real doors and vents still visible beneath it. Dave Baranes painted Le Tigre on an electrical transformer beside Courtenay’s town hall, in a project supported by Enedis. He completed the mural in three days, even painting rust marks onto the doors and walls to make the scene more convincing.

🔗 Dave Baranes on Instagram. Photo: Blue Bicycle In Paris.

🦊 El zorro tentirujo — By Nina Valkhoff in Torrelavega, Spain 🇪🇸

An orange fox tumbles among large mushrooms, moths and leaves, with its paws lifted and a yellow bird overhead. Nina Valkhoff painted the mural for the 2026 Alegra la Vista festival. It fills a narrow facade on Amancio Ruiz Capillas in the Covadonga neighborhood, where the festival began transforming the blind walls around an interior square into an outdoor gallery.

🔗 Nina Valkhoff on Instagram. Photo: Nina Valkhoff.

🌊 Seahorse — By Hannah Bullen-Ryner

Hannah Bullen-Ryner arranges pebbles and small found fragments into a seahorse on the ground. Blue pieces trace its body, with pink, yellow and white details along the curled tail and long snout. The ground shows through the gaps between the pieces.

💡 Nerd Fact: Bullen-Ryner uses no glue or permanent fixings in her land art. She explains that heavier natural pieces can anchor lighter ones against the wind, and that the photograph is the only part she keeps.

🔗 Hannah Bullen-Ryner on Instagram

🦌 Woodland Deer — By Bmore Sketchy in Houston, Scotland 🇬🇧

A deer and fawn rest beside a stream on the side of a house in Houston, Renfrewshire. Tree trunks frame the scene, and a large butterfly hovers above the water. Bmore Sketchy carries the woodland painting around the real window, with the low stone wall marking where the painted forest meets the pavement.

🔗 Bmore Sketchy on Instagram

Which one is your favorite?