This past summer (2017) I, along with a friend were hired to paint a custom mural out in Medicine Park, Oklahoma. The only instruction we were given was that it had to reflect the local scenery. Medicine park is a small community that sits within a mile of a 60,000 acre wildlife preserve including, beautiful mountains, plains and quirky attractions.
It was not difficult to get inspired within a day of being there. Khoury and I decided on doing six scenes having them start at dawn and end at dusk. Due to the shape of the fence we were painting we also wanted to break each scene up with a vignette that depicted local wildlife in a more tribal style. We spent about 2 days researching, photographing and planning the mural and spent 5 days painting. I tackled the large scenes and Khoury took the task of designing and painting the animals.
I certainly am no realist when it comes to my art style and I didn’t want to try that in the mural. I went with what I can only loosely call an impressionist approach. I wanted to represent the bright colours and the feeling of space. The Skies were beautiful, even during a storm, so I really focused a lot of time on perfecting clouds and details for the early morning and evening.
Some of the biggest obstacles of this experience stemmed from this being our first ever mural, though we both came out very satisfied. As did the client. We also had to battle with taking constant breaks during the 100-degree weather in Oklahoma’s early spring. And I got stung by a scorpion!
I fell in love with Oklahoma and I was already invited back to do a continuation on the inside of the fence.
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