Graffiti News

What was painted at Capelulo, and what happened to it

Greenpeace painted a 1,120-square-metre image on a fire-scorched mountainside above Capelulo in Conwy, north Wales, and two local residents removed it with rakes within days. The BBC reported the story on 21 August 2026.

According to the BBC, the image showed Prime Minister Andy Burnham holding an oil drum, alongside the words "Our house is on fire Andy". It was an anti-oil and anti-drilling message aimed directly at the prime minister.

The hillside it was painted on had burned two months earlier. The BBC reported that around 200 acres were affected by wildfires in July 2026, that North Wales Fire and Rescue Service declared a major incident, and that 36 homes were evacuated as the blaze came within yards of destroying properties.

Why residents called a climate message an intrusion

Allie Evans, a 53-year-old hairdresser who was among those evacuated, walked up the mountain when photographs of the work appeared on Monday. "I can't remember having been so angry and upset all at once," she told the BBC.

Evans framed her objection in two parts. "It was so disrespectful to the landscapes. It was also an intrusion into local grief, which is how we felt when we came back home to see the mountain so utterly changed," she said. "It added insult to injury. I couldn't understand how an organisation that wants to protect the environment, can graffiti the earth and stain rocks which are millions of years old." A banner, she argued, would have carried the same message without touching the ground.

Evans went up with Dean Ward, a resident of Rhos-on-Sea. The pair broke up the paint and raked the flakes into the soil. "We were concerned a lot of people would want to go up the mountain to see the graffiti, and the hillside would get trashed," Evans said. Some of it had baked hard and would not come off. "So you can still see stripes on the site, if not the overall graffiti."

Ward told Greenpeace online that he had taken "great pleasure" in removing the work, adding: "Thought Greenpeace was all about leave no trace and you do this to the mountain side."

Janet Finch-Saunders, the Senedd member for Bangor Conwy Môn, called the work "environmental vandalism" and said burnt hillsides should not be used "as a canvas for political protest".

Greenpeace says the work was temporary by design

Areeba Hamid, co-executive director of Greenpeace UK, told the BBC the group had not set out to upset anyone. "Our artwork was not intended to disturb [people's] grief but to draw attention to the escalating climate crisis that's putting these beautiful places and communities at risk," Hamid said.

Hamid described the materials in detail. "We took great care to minimise our impact on the land. The artwork was temporary by design: created with a water-based paint often used on sports turf and safe for grass, plants and soil," she said. "It was applied to an area where the fire had already burned away all living vegetation, leaving just rocks and ash."

The real threat, Hamid argued, was not "a dab of water-based paint" but "extreme weather driven by fossil fuels". She said the group wanted "to challenge the system that caused this damage and send a vital message to the prime minister: the science shows that more oil and gas drilling means more communities left to cope with the devastation brought by heat, droughts and wildfires."

Both sides reached for the same word

The most telling detail in the Conwy dispute is that everyone involved used the language of vandalism. Residents and a Senedd member applied it to Greenpeace. Greenpeace applied it, in substance, to fossil fuel extraction. Which use is correct is not something this article will settle.

The structure of the argument, though, is old and familiar to anyone who follows street art. Who decides what goes on a surface the public has to look at? That question has been fought over on city walls for decades. Here the surface happened to be a mountainside, which raises the stakes in two ways: the scale is enormous, and the place carried a specific, recent grief for the people living below it.

The case also shows that choosing gentle materials does not end the argument. Greenpeace's defence rested on chemistry and impermanence. The residents' objection rested on consent. Artists who work in chalk, water, mud or reverse graffiti — removing dirt rather than adding paint — run into exactly the same gap.

What to look at where you are

Temporary work is the hardest kind to study, because by the time you hear about it, it is usually gone. The Capelulo image lasted days. Whatever documentation exists is now the work.

If you find something short-lived near you, photograph it and pin it on the map before it disappears. The feed is where other people's finds turn up.

Original reporting: BBC News