Nuala Convery (Wee Nuls) is a 28year old street artist & illustrator from Belfast.
Her street art career started via an unusual route, the events industry . She started off creating murals of her illustrations for the decor design at festivals and dance music events with the events company she works for DSNT.
Nuala has some friends who do graffiti who helped show her the ropes, and she was given great opportunities from Seedhead Arts who run the street art tour and street art festival in Belfast.
What genre / style do you create in?
My work is always colourful and character based, in a sort of cartoon / comic book kind of style rather than realistic portraits.
What would you be best known for?
Big 4-eyed alien princess gremlins hahah
What would you consider your biggest achievement?
My favourite piece to date is my collaborative piece with Ten Hun and KVLR, you can see it outside one of my favourite bars in Belfast, the Sunflower Bar
What would you consider to be the biggest lesson you’ve learned in your industry?
Make as many connections with people as you can in the industry you want to get in to!
I spend a lot of time volunteering, putting myself forward for work / freelance work and just generally making myself known + having a great work ethic when I was given any opportunities. If you put good energy out you’ll get good energy back.
What has been your biggest challenge to date?
In January I had an opportunity to create murals for an exhibition in the Spectrum Centre for Greater Shankill Initiative which was amazing – I had to create 3 really big murals in the space of a week which was physically quite challenging but I loved the end result.
Tell us a little about your personal life, are you married, kids, hobbies etc?
No kids yet but I have a cat baby called Fintan haha! In my spare time I do pole dancing at Polercise and trapeze & silks at Belfast Community Circus School.
Tell us about your most recent work?
My most recent mural was for Hit The North Festival 2020, you can see it on Kent Street in Belfast. I painted 2 big bikini babes as an ode to all the summer holidays everyone missed out on because of Covid-19.
What would you like us to tell people about?
I’ll be displaying my work at the ‘Melting Pot’ Exhibition in Artcetera later in November alongside some other local artists. I’ll also be running a stall at the Vault Christmas Art Market in Vault Studios on the weekend of the 5th of December. I have some new prints available to purchase on my web store also and more merch coming soon: www.weenuls.com
If you had to describe your work to someone who has never heard of you what would you say?
Big spicy alien babes
What’s the funniest experience you’ve had in your business?
People coming up to me on the street and asking me if I’m the girl who paints the girls with big boobs and 4 eyes hahah.
What would your advice be to young people hoping to pursue the same industry?
If you already love to create art using paint and paper or any other art medium then you can learn to take that style into spray paint.. It seems daunting at first but you can teach yourself how to do anything!
Watch some youtube videos on how to use spray paint, follow instagram accounts of artists who inspire you. Make sure you have a legal space to practice on and always wear a good ventilation mask.
Anything else you want to tell people about yourself or your work?
Street art is something I was interested in for years but never thought I could actually do it as a career! I love being self employed and I’d love to encourage other young people that they can do the same.
Who do you look up to and why?
There are loads of amazing local street artists here and a really supportive scene – artists like Friz, KVLR, Emic, and Francois Got Buffed are all killing it and were really welcoming to me when I started painting.
Laura Callaghan is an amazing Irish artist who I really look up to stylistically.
Ten Hundred who I painted with outside the Sunflower has made such a big name for himself with his art and youtube videos which is so class to see.
Aches from Dublin has some stunning work and is really pushing the boundaries with his art – it has an almost digital graphic style but using spray paint, I have no idea how he does it which is fascinating to me!
You can find Nuala (Wee Nuls) on Facebook!