A Portland Map for my Title Company

Hi everyone!

Hope everyone's had a great weekend. Mine was totally packed full - working hard and playing hard. Yesterday, I spent all day mural-ing. Then, drinks with friends and a sublime tribute concert! The best. 

This mural concept began back in October, when I sat over an inch-thick stack of papers, preparing to sign on the dotted line (all of them) to finalize the purchase of my home. I did this through Ticor Title, here in Portland. They were super helpful and awesome, explaining everything patiently. Since the person helping me was looking through my entire financial life, she commented on the fact that I'm a muralist as one of my jobs. She mentioned that Ticor might be interested in a mural, once they moved spaces. Fast forward to a few weeks ago, when Ticor reached out to me, hoping I'd still be up for a mural in their new office. STOKED, of course. We went with a big map of Portland neighborhoods for their lobby space. They were excited about a black and white look, with just one color - their branding color of blue, for the rivers running through our city. Their idea is to have homebuyers come in and selfie next to their new neighborhoods, as a marketing strategy. I love that! The even insisted I make note of the fact that I bought my first home with them, directly on the mural, near my signature. It's just such a cool company to want to do something like this. I was really happy to be involved.

The actual act of painting this felt very physical to me. I was totally sweating through this one. I think being on a ladder, and having to keep an extremely steady hand for so long, is what did it. There's not a lot of room for error in an all-typographical mural like this. But I sure liked the meditative quality of making all these damn letters and lines. Super fun, if technically tedious. And also, very different from what I'm usually asked to paint. The graphic designer part of me is at the same time, satisfied and overwhelmed. But overall, I like. More of this, please!

Good night and happy Sunday, friends!

A Hunting Mural for the Whole Fam

Hey everyone!

This mural went in the playroom of a sweet new client family's home. I've come to know them a little bit, and enjoy their energy and their aesthetic. For this mural, they asked for something that would please all of them - the husband, the wife, and the kids. The husband is a hunter, and asked to include an elk with exactly 6 points on his antlers, as well as other elk hunting imagery, like the rubbed off spot on the tree bark (I guess it's a "tell" that elk are near), and the muddy hole/pond that they drink from (or roll in? I forget.) The wife wanted a purple-y moonlit sky. The kids, well, they got a cool thing to look at in their awesome playroom. The owl mural I made a few weeks ago, is on the wall across from this one. We're still going to add at least one of two more little vignettes in this room. Should be a super cool space when it's done. Ahhhhh I just love pacific-northwest-ys and our need for bringing nature into the home, in all the various forms. Maybe that's just a universal thing though, nature. Either way, it makes this tree-hugging muralist happy. 

 

A Dreamy Mural for Guests

Hi Everyone!

I just finished up a mural for my friends who run Dreaming Tree Rentals out of NW Portland. This mural is small (ish) but hopefully, impactful, as it's the first thing you see when you enter the airbnb rental apartments. This wall is the central point as you walk up the flight of stairs, leading to a landing that separates off into three different apartments: "The Hideaway", "The Oasis" and "The Nest". We debated for awhile about whether the design should be more about the urban parts of the city, or more about the natural parts. In the end, we decided that maybe if you're visiting Portland and staying in the rentals, what you might want after a long day exploring, is a bit of peace and quiet. The spaces really do feel like a secluded escape from the city, and the mural speaks to that, now.

I like to think I got a little loose with this one - letting my swirly brushstrokes and shapes come out to play a bit more than usual. This is definitely how I prefer to paint, rather than rendering things more realistically. Because what is art, if not augmenting reality? And swirlies are how I choose to augment.

This was sure a fun one... I just wish you could see it! I've decided that I've been in business long enough to invest a bit more into it, and get myself a nicer camera to document my work with. Every year around tax time, I always ponder the same thing - I run a funny sort of business in that there is little to no overhead. I go to other people to work, with no actual space rental myself. Yes, I buy paint in large quantities a few times a year, and splurge on brushes sometimes (because there's just no escaping an art store without throwing down for a few new brushes that I'm sure I NEED. NEED!) ...And I pay to host my website. But other than that, my business is sort of run on my brain and my hands. So I'm going to turn some of 2016's mural income into a camera, and I couldn't be more stoked. Look forward to blog and website updates with crisper, more true-to-life color photos cuz this girl's iphone is just not cutting it anymore. But for today, enjoy the following:

Owls and Aspens

Hi Everyone! I'm posting about a project on the day I painted it...whaaat? So prompt.

I loved this one. Not only for obvious reasons (got to paint fluffy baby owlets), but for reasons not shown in these pictures. I loved painting this wall because the owner of it was an extraordinarily sweet person with a cute, cute family. When I started painting murals for money about 14 (WHAT?!?) years ago, I only really painted for family friends, or friends of friends. But now that my business has grown, my clients are mostly strangers. And I love when I meet nice strangers and get to connect with their families. Painting inside someone's home means asking a lot of questions about their lives. It means being in their space for hours on end and playing with their children. It sometimes means eating meals in their homes or accepting a bottomless cup of tea. This job allows me to meet people in my city that I would otherwise maybe never get to know. In all these years, I can only remember a couple of instances where my gut was telling me to avoid a Stranger Danger situation, and I did not go through with a mural. The other 99% of my clients have been pretty darn lovely. Anyways, with this one, I just felt very welcomed into this family's home. They even offered to let me and my fiance stay the night when they heard our furnace was broken (fixed now!). More than that, these murals seem to mean a lot to them. I am slowly transforming a dark and dingy basement into a lighter, brighter space for their children to play. They are picking trees, colors, and animals that are significant to their family. The funniest thing was, after all that thought and planning, none of us realized until I was finished that I had painted an owl mom of twins - just like my client and her children. How did we miss that one? 

This is one of 3-4 smaller vignette-type of projects we have planned in their home. Loving the challenge of creating pieces that fade off into their wall, instead of completely covering it. Super fun!

Summer Throw-back Projects

Hi Everyone!

Happy new year!! Happy to be in 2017. 2016 was intense and sad in so many ways for the world. The orlando shooting rocked me pretty hard, as did Prince and Bowie's deaths, as did the election results, and I could go on, but I won't. It's been quite a mess of a year in a lot of ways, and the resulting stress and sadness for the world can get overwhelming. But when I narrow down to my own little life, I must say, 2016 has been overwhelmingly wonderful. The big things are pretty obvious - house + fiance + new day (non mural) job, which I start tomorrow....eeee! Those are some big ol' wonderful changes, and I am extremely grateful for all of them. But again, to jump on the bandwagon, yay 2017. Wishing all of you the best of the best for this coming year.

As I gear up for some wintertime painting, I'm realizing that I still haven't posted about all the Summer/fall painting, so thought I would do a bit of catching up today. Here are a couple I missed:

This first commission was about honoring a loved one who passed away. I won't get into details, but all the elements you see here were chosen specifically to combine into a large piece in memory of someone. It's commissions like this, that are deeply customized and therefore deeply personal and meaningful, that in turn give me the most satisfaction to paint for people. These kinds of commissions are about more than beauty. They are about visually representing a feeling for someone. I hope it brings my client a little bit of peace.

On the technical side of this one, I very much enjoyed the challenge of creating a design on three separate, long panels.  Each panel was a different idea, and needed to stand on it's own, but at the same time, go with the others. Super fun and challenging.

The mural, hung in it's final spot at my client's home. Much better picture quality than the first two!

The second project I failed to post, is a bit more lighthearted. This was a commission for a friend's new baby. Cue the awwwwwwwww for this first pic: Cutest tiny satisfied mini-client!

I'm so happy to have been able to help these sweet new parents settle into their new house. I loved this little Pooh and Piglet scene idea, and the quote that they chose from "The Tao of Pooh." So perfect for a little boo's room. And so much fun to paint! I am always all about painting back-lit leaves. Juicy. YES.

New year's resolution: post these thingies as I go! Yeesh!

My Home is Portland Oregon

You guys. It has been an embarassingly long time since I've posted a blog. It's preeeetty bad.

But a lot has happened over the last couple months! Here's what I've been up to:

Bought a house:

P.s. this is pic is from my instagram which you can follow here: @talkingwallsmurals  #notsosubtleplug

Got engaged:

We look like zombies because we were dancing at the annual Thrill the World event - an event where people all over the world dance simultaneously to Michael Jackson's "Thriller" and raise money for charity. Don't worry about it. My fiance knows me well and knows that I could not have been more into having fake blood dripping down my face while he asked me to marry him. Quirky, and so, so perfect for us. I am so happy!! 

So yeah, house projects and wedding planning madness occupies time. But now, I'm going to share a mural with you because that is primarily what this blog is about. I did another Portland-themed mural! This one is in the lobby of an apartment complex in NW Portland. It was super fun! Subject matter that I am super familiar with by now, but it's always fun to come up with fresh ways of doing it. And I actually really really love painting Mt. Hood. It takes my breath away even still, to come around a corner on a clear day and see Hood looking down over our beautiful city.

Also, on a nerdy note, the surface I painted this mural on was unlike any wall I've ever worked on. It was like there was a cloth-like surface treatment over the wall board. Pretty old building, so I'm not sure what it actually was, but it felt like painting on a canvas board. I was so into it. I want that on every wall! Anyway, here are the pics: (Not my best work as a mural-photographer though... there were windows behind me so the light is shining very strangely over the mural. I'll go back at some point to take better ones. But you get the idea.)

 

Summer/Fall Reflection Time

Hi everyone!

Get ready for loooong, end-of-season reflection time!

Mural work seems to come in waves. The winter time, especially right after the holidays, can be a slow time for business. With the return of the sunshine in Spring, people start to think about home/business improvement again, and my business picks up. Outdoor murals are also much more feasible during this time, given Portland’s wet weather. It’s been a busy warm season for me, for sure. But I definitely played as hard as I worked. I got outside a lot, and made some awesome Summer memories with friends, family and my love.

We’re right in the middle of that transition between Summer and Fall. This time of year, I always start to mourn Summer a little bit. I am absolutely a sun child and like the heat and all that it brings. The Fall is always my consolation prize for Summer ending though. Fall brings us Halloweeeen, which is magical and I adore. For me, Fall is also a time to turn inwards a bit more. Literally, I stay inside more, and also, I find that the weather makes me tune into my inner self more - it’s time to get to work. I have a few projects coming up that I’m super excited about - indoor wall, small commission painting, and one or two straggler outdoor walls that I hope can get finalized before the rain comes full force. They’re all different and will make for a fun Fall lineup of jobs. I’m realizing one thing though: I have neglected to make art for myself just for my own enjoyment, for a long time. I’ve been hustling hard, and playing in the sunshine the rest of the time. This Fall, I’m going to commit to doing some work simply to feed my own creative drive. I’m looking forward to spending some of the rainier days to come, settling in to paint. For me.

Friends, I want to tell you something SO BAD, but it feels jinx-y to announce fully just yet. So I'll just be vague (sorrynotsorry). I have been doing this work for a long time, sometimes making literally no money from projects (super rarely now tho, thankfully), and sometimes making the kind of bank I could never have imagined years ago. I have been doing this work - painting walls for money - for 13 years now. Doing exactly what I love has allowed me now, to buy myself a house. This is a ridiculous sentence for me to read back. While I’m not completely out of the woods in achieving that goal, I am staring the end of the long process in the face, and hoping for the best. The home-buying journey is an incredibly fast-paced one, especially in Portland’s market. With some time to breathe now, I’m feeling some space to reflect.

Painting is the work that makes me feel the most like myself. It is my favorite thing to do alone. It is the activity I missed most, when I was in the Peace Corps in Madagascar and away from pretty much every aspect of what makes up my life in America. It is also part of my job. It’s sometimes super weird that those 2 things combine - passion and money - but for me, most of the time, that combination is wonderful and fulfilling. Is it awkward sometimes to ask for money for what I enjoy doing? Yes. But then I remind myself that I spent a long time in school (and out), training for this. And a lot of people love their jobs, and also get paid for them. It’s such a blessing. I just want to thank all of you reading, who has ever been my client. I wish I would have kept track of every single person who has ever commissioned me for something. But I do know there are some of you out there who have, who are reading. If that is you, THANK YOU. You, plus all the others, are who have allowed me to even consider this gigantic goal. Thank you thank you thank you, and I love you all.

…New mural sketch below, cuz you don’t come for the babbles, right? ;)