Murals

A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to get back the kind of painting that I really love to do. About a year ago some friends of mine were having a baby shower to welcome the newest addition to their family. I had no money, but I had remembered them asking me once if I would be interested in doing a mural. So I gave them a “coupon” good for one pro-bono mural of any size for their child's nursery. Just after his first birthday they decided to "cash in" their coupon. They provided the canvases (three of them total, recycled, close to 2ft by 1ft each) and they had only one request for what I painted on it: To include the family's favorite animals somehow. Elephants.... and Raptors. I took the challenge and ran with it.

I LOVE doing this kind of work. This is what I enjoy most. painting large scale fantastic colorful scenes geared towards children. Images life-size enough to a child that their imagination can suck them into it. Its where I got my start.

Before I moved to Durham, NC I had done two large-scale Noah's Ark murals for churches in the West Michigan area. The second one I tried my best to make at least a 1/3 of the animals close to life size so you could really FEEL like you were on an ark. I had a whale that stretched across 10 ft of wall, with an eye the size of a coaster (right at eye level to children on the lower floor of the building). Even before mural work, when I was a teenager I worked as a set designer/ stage hand at the local theatre. Painting the backdrops that set the scenes for actors was my favorite part--- so thats what I tried to bring into my murals. A stage. So that is what I set out to do with this project as well. I staggered the canvases as I laid out shapes, rather than have them all line up, to give them an asymmetrical triptych and expand the amount of implied space/setting. The idea was simple: a loosely continuous background with 3 completely separate scenes blended together. One safari One underwater One prehistoric

I did it in about a week while my clients were out of town, in layers, starting with just blocking in shapes for the mountains and beaches and water, and then blocking in color for the larger animals. I was determined to have it done before they returned. Using.... an excessive amount of acrylic paints and loose impressionistic brush strokes up against cartoony figures. (And a lot of forced/warped perspective)

Finished and hung it spans almost an entire wall. Because its acrylic, its safe for their kid to touch and dried pretty much the same day I completed it. A lot of the smaller details and the character in the faces of the creatures cant really be seen in the full photos unfortunately. I will most likely, at some point, add another gallery to my gallery page for it. The best part of all of this though? The kids reaction when he saw it.