Earlier this month (February 14), Banksy unveiled a special Valentine’s Day mural on the side of a house in Barton Hill, Bristol, only to have the artwork vandalised just a few days later. Now, the graffiti artist has said that he’s “kind of glad” vandals defaced his latest piece of street art because “the initial sketch was a lot better anyway”.

The original work depicted a young girl firing a slingshot into the sky, creating an explosion of red roses that resemble fireworks. Banksy confirmed he was behind the artwork with an Instagram post of the design in the early hours of Valentine’s Day. 

The mural only lasted 48 hours, however, before graffiti reading “BCC WANKERS” was scrawled across it – seemingly an insult aimed at Bristol City Council.

Residents of Barton Hill are likely to be more disappointed than Banksy about the destruction of the work. The Valentine’s Day mural is one of Banksy’s first outright works in Bristol in several years, with some residents speculating that the artist had intended to highlight a neglected community. One resident, Kelly Woodruff, whose dad owns the house that the piece was painted on, attempted to protect the work by shielding it from the approaching Storm Dennis. “It’s incredible and beautiful,” she said on the day it was unveiled. 

After the original work was defaced, another local resident told the Guardian: “It’s a real shame, but it was always going to happen, unfortunately.” 

Banksy has a long history of defacing other artist’s work, not to mention shredding his own pieces, so it’s little surprise that the elusive artist is less than perturbed by vandals’ addition to his most recent example of street art. Besides, who said that destruction has to be defeatist anyway?