EVEN before the paint had time to properly dry on a piece of colourful street art, vandals had attempted to destroy it.

The street art was supposed to bring a splash of colour to a run down piece of land overlooking Redcar Esplanade.

Teesside artist Bobzilla - real name Robert Page - was called in to spruce up some boarding covering a deserted patch of land.

And after spending hours designing and painting the swallow and seagull work of art on Thursday the artist was intending to return today (Friday, November 13) and apply the finishing touches.

However, before he got the chance to complete his work the vandals had thrown paint all over it.

Refusing to be too downbeat over the actions of the vandals, he said: "I think it adds a nice texture which I can use in the background but it does cheat people, who like it, out of a visual treat in spite of all the bad stuff happening at present in the area."

The artist volunteered to carry out the work as two of the town's ward councillors, Neil Baldwin and Carl Quartermain, continue in their attempts to spruce up the town.

Cllr Baldwin said: “I went past at 9pm last night and it was fine, but by 7am today it was a different story.

“My heart sank and my initial reaction was ‘is it worth carrying on?’ Someone has gone and got two different tins of paint to do this. But I emailed Rob, he said he’d carry on and that’s what we’ll do.

“The first thought was to give up, it’s never going to change. But we came to realise that with the outrage it has already created, people do care and we can’t stop.”

Cllr Baldwin said community police were aware of the incident and CCTV coverage of the area would be looked at.

He said Bobzilla volunteered to do the work with paint originally bought to spruce up a Redcar seafront shelter torched earlier in the year. However, the paint wasn’t required when the shelter was repaired sooner than expected.