Elbow Toe, New York Street Artist (PHOTOS)

Walking down the street in New York you pass by grit and grime, and amidst the decay you find moments of purposeful art like Elbow Toe's twisted 'paper paintings'. Elbow Toe is Brian Adam Douglas, a Brooklyn street artist who years ago decided the gallery art world was too stifling for his career, so he tried his hand at street art instead. Thus he created the identity of Elbow Toe, after another bodypart NYC street artist, Neck Face. In an interview with Gamma Blog, he explains his fascination with street art:

I used to live on the Upper East Side, and I'd seen De la Vega, his stuff on the streets, I appreciated it. It was always a nice moment to come across. It was something you could interpret. It sort of came out of that, something else to try. Maybe it's a bad habit, but I tend not to stick in one way of working for too long. I get really curious. I'm all over the place.

Elbow Toe creates very intricate drawings and pastes them to dirtied walls and uprooted sidewalks, the jagged, messy aspect of his art neatly complimenting its urban environs. Street art is a fleeting artform, often graffitied over or torn down, so it's good to look while you can:

For more images, including new paintings that will be showing at the Warrington Museum in the UK, visit Elbow Toe's website.