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The Rainbow Express Pulls into Kiev

Spanish street artist Okuda decked out an entire train in colorful geometric creatures.
Images courtesy the artist

In an artwork sure to be used as a metaphor by every acid-dropping, mushroom-gobbling psychonaut on the web, Spanish muralist Okuda San Miguel has coated an entire train in Kiev with his trademark geometric technicolor artwork. Human faces and dancing animals add a splash of color to the Ukrainian city's railyards and train stations, making a statement that is both beautiful and political. "This train is part of a cry for freedom most of the country has been screaming lately," Okuda tells The Creators Project of his colorful throwback to illegally tagging trains in his youth.

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"I've painted trains before, but those had a very different feeling. This time it is something special that the intervention on the trains is going to last longer, especially in a country like Ukraine," Okuda says. "Back in the day, the illegal side of painting trains was a spur, but when you painted a train you knew it would take a while to remove the piece. Nowadays, with new technologies, you can paint a train today and it will be 'clean' tomorrow."

An organization called ArtUnitedUs made Okuda's intervention in the Ukranian capital possible, but this is far from his first transformation of a large locomotive. Earlier this year, he drenched a big rig in polygonal characters as part of The Truck Art Project. When he's not painting trains and trucks, Okuda seems to have a fixation on holy architetecture, plastering his iconography on a Moroccan chapel and a cathedral-turned-skate park.

His murals on the Kiev metro system are divided into 10 pieces spread across five cars. Check out the whole set in the imagery below.

See more of Okuda San Miguel's art on his website.

Related:

A Street Art Skate Park Fills a Former Spanish Church

Rainbow Geometric Murals Coat a Moroccan Chapel

Spanish Art: One Big Rig at a Time