Dig My Sandy Grave, Whilst I Eat This Melting Ice Cream

LUAP returns to his hometown of Cleethorpes to paint his largest mural to date. The work brings his Pink Bear to the coast in a surreal and heartfelt celebration of memory, identity and emotional wellbeing.

In summer 2024, LUAP completes a major new public mural in Cleethorpes, Lincolnshire. Titled Dig My Sandy Grave Whilst I Eat This Melting Ice Cream, the piece stretches 22 metres across a prominent wall on Market Street and brings LUAP’s iconic Pink Bear to the familiar setting of the British seaside.

Painted as part of the Paint the Town Proud programme, the mural merges childhood imagery with psychological depth. The Pink Bear reclines in a deckchair, surrounded by sand, sun and a rapidly melting cone. What appears playful at first glance becomes more complex on reflection. It is a work about nostalgia, impermanence, and the balancing act between joy and vulnerability.

The mural marks a personal moment for LUAP. Originally from neighbouring Grimsby, he describes the commission as a homecoming that links personal history with public space.

“It’s fun, but at the same time it has meaning. I was going through a period of depression in my life and started having cognitive behavioural therapy. I recalled this image from my childhood — sitting in a deckchair by the sea — and started putting it in my work as a way of addressing the challenges we deal with as adults.”

The Pink Bear has long been LUAP’s way of processing emotional landscapes. Reimagined in oil paintings, performance, photography and now large-scale murals, the character is both observer and participant. It acts as an avatar for quiet internal experience within loud external settings.

Bringing the bear to Cleethorpes adds a new layer. The seaside becomes a place of return, memory and reflection. The mural’s title — Dig My Sandy Grave Whilst I Eat This Melting Ice Cream — captures that collision of playfulness and unease. It invites humour but also introspection.

“It’s nice to come back to my hometown and create something for the local community,” LUAP says. “It’s quite nostalgic. The piece is about capturing a moment — how time and memory slip through your fingers like sand.”

The mural becomes an instant point of connection. Locals recognise the setting. Visitors are drawn to its surreal charm. Others see something of themselves in the stillness of the Pink Bear. Painted in the town where LUAP grew up, the work resonates not just as public art, but as a gesture of return. It is an offering to a place that helped shape him.