Graffiti News

Psa began painting the eyes around 2022

The eyes appearing around Glasgow and western Scotland are the work of Psa, an anonymous artist who began developing the design seriously around 2022. According to BBC News, the paintings appear in alleyways, beneath busy motorways and on large unused billboards. Some are small and easy to miss; others include a smiling mouth. Their repeated form makes them recognisable across different surroundings.

Psa also has other work in Glasgow, Lanarkshire and Paisley, but the eyes have become the clearest identifier of their practice. The artist, who is in their thirties, asked BBC Scotland News to withhold identifying details, including their gender. Psa described doing some graffiti when younger before pursuing it more seriously after Covid, placing that change at around 2022.

For someone following street art, the useful distinction is between a recurring motif and a single destination mural. The BBC account describes many versions encountered across an area. It does not provide a complete inventory, individual street addresses or a mapped route connecting them.

The repeated motif invites discovery and questions visibility

Psa wants finding the eyes to feel like a small game, while also raising questions about how people are watched online. The artist told the BBC that spotting one painting could encourage someone to notice another. As a comparison, Psa mentioned the Pride of Paisley sculpture trail in 2016, which placed 25 large colourful lions and 40 smaller ones around the area.

That comparison helps explain the appeal of repetition in public space: recognising a familiar image can change what a passer-by notices along the way. It does not establish the eyes as an organised sculpture trail. The BBC report gives no formal itinerary for the paintings, and the artist describes making both small works while out and larger versions requiring more effort.

The more serious theme concerns digital surveillance. Psa spoke about companies observing online activity and profiting from it, and about phones turning events in public into material that can remain online. Within that explanation, the painted eyes return a gaze. They connect the act of looking at a wall with the experience of being visible to other people and to digital systems.

Eye contact gives the work a personal dimension

The eyes also reflect Psa’s own difficulty with eye contact and feelings of visibility in public. Discussing their experience of autism with the BBC, the artist described painting eyes as a way of looking back. This is Psa’s account of their own experience and its relationship to the work.

That personal explanation sits alongside the broader concern about surveillance. The same simple design can carry the pleasure of discovery, discomfort about observation and an attempt to respond to being seen. Reading those strands together gives viewers more to consider than whether a particular pair looks cheerful or unsettling.

Psa also connected graffiti with an impulse previously expressed through skateboarding: interacting with surroundings beyond their intended use. For a street-art viewer, that offers a reason to consider the setting as well as the image. A small pair tucked away and a larger painting on an unused billboard ask for different kinds of attention, even when the central design is familiar.

Police rejected the Clyde Tunnel crash rumour

Police Scotland rejected suggestions that a driver crashed near the Clyde Tunnel after mistaking the painted eyes for its entrance. According to the BBC, speculation circulated on social media and was then repeated by media outlets in Britain and abroad. Comparisons with painted roads in Road Runner cartoons helped give the story a memorable shape, but did not make the suggested cause true.

Psa saw the circulation of that claim as an example of the work’s themes: something posted online becomes widely visible and can remain there. That is the artist’s interpretation of the rumour’s spread, separate from the police rejection of its factual premise. Visitors should not treat the crash story as an explanation of the paintings or a verified account of the accident.

Psa said they intended to continue painting eyes and had an exhibition planned for later in the year. The report supplies no exhibition date or venue. Anyone looking for the work should also distinguish a reported location from a suitable viewing spot: an image beneath a motorway or near a tunnel is not automatically accessible on foot. Observe from public pedestrian space without entering road infrastructure.

Explore other street art and murals on Wallscape’s map.

Source: BBC News