Senses Graffiti Derbyshire

Description

In this striking reinterpretation of the flag of Derbyshire, Senses Graffiti Derbyshire layers sensory language onto a symbol of local pride and regional resilience. The familiar green cross and deep blue quarters form the structure of the composition — a nod to the county’s verdant countryside and flowing rivers, long overshadowed by coal dust and factory smoke.

At the centre lies the Tudor rose, traditionally a symbol of unity, but here it glows with a radioactive intensity — part nature, part hazard warning. Around it orbit Steit’s signature sensory pairings:
LOOK & SEE, HEAR & LISTEN, LEARN & KNOW, SMELL & SCENT, TASTE & SAVOUR, TOUCH & FEEL — stencilled in ghostly blues and acidic greens. These words are not neutral; they speak of labour, embodiment, and the tools through which we process the world.

The piece reads as a meditation on Derbyshire’s central role in the Industrial Revolution — the mills of Cromford, the railways of Derby, and the once-iron certainty of mechanised progress. Here, though, that past hums faintly beneath layers of sprayed pigment and fading text. Industry built the modern world, but also dulled the senses — standardising time, motion, even perception itself.

In Steit’s hands, the flag becomes a site of reckoning. It asks: What does it mean to feel place after its economic purpose has waned? How do we sense history in landscapes once reshaped by machines, now being reclaimed by green?

This is not a nostalgic image. The distortion, blurring, and energetic splatter evoke disruption, decay, and potential renewal. The sensory words resist easy reading, just as post-industrial identity resists neat resolution.

Created in Derbyshire, June 2025.

Original artwork specifications

• Stretched Canvas
• Glossy Spray paint Gold & Multi colour
• Varnish
• 60 x 60 x 1.5 cm
• Unique artwork

Canvas may have a slight size deviation up to a few millimetres.