‘Auras’ Taylor Swift on the Spanish Steps at Wembley Park by Frank Styles.

The mural, called ‘Auras’ by Frank Styles, is compiled digitally from over 30 separate physical paintings and aims to do a deep dive into the aura of Taylor Swift and the seemingly boundless energy that spills out from her. The main portrait was painted on the side of a garage in the artists resident city of Sunderland, where he enlisted the help of many local Swifties to help decide on which TS Easter eggs to include. Painted using freehand spray paint it, it stands just 8ft tall. The draw of Taylor Swift is highlighted when Styles realised how many people are travelling down from Sunderland to Wembley to see her perform.

The portrait is best viewed exactly 20m back from the bottom of the middle step at 1.7m from the ground. The various Easter eggs have different  perspective points as you ascend the stairs. Its not Styles’ first anamorphic mural, but it is the first that features different perspective points overplayed on the same flight of steps. Pushing things further than his last artwork here painted for MIND, ‘One in Four’ 2020.

The artist said: 

You won’t get the whole picture until you’ve spent some time looking at it from different angles. This reflects the various emotions in Taylor Swifts music, you can’t understand them in one go, you need to take time to look at things from other perspectives.  I’ve used my new gradient reveal technique to produce some of the artwork for this mural. If you watch the videos then you’ll see that even I don’t see the finished artwork until the final reveal stage. 

The Steps have since be renamed - Swift Steps. During the first run of shows thousands of Swiftie’s have been along and queued to a selfie on the Swiftie Steps. To best photograph the steps, stand 20m back from the middle of the bottom step just in front of the pole. From this perspective point her face can be line up perfectly.

Frank Styles (seated ) with (from left) Deputy Mayor for Culture and the Creative Industries Justine Simons OBE; Wembley Park CEO James Saunders; Mayor of London Sadiq Khan; Wembley Park Head of Marketing Claudio Giambrone and Brent Council leader Coun Muhammed Butt | David Parry/PA Media Assignments