‘I’ll do more than wishing someday’ is complete!
It took five months from start to finish, for me to finally put this baby to rest, but it was a great learning experience, and it gave me purpose in a time of uncertainty, and all because my 25yr old said, “why don’t you see if Colleen will let you paint a mural, mom?”
This is the largest painting I have ever done, and the most abstracted imagery. My preferred medium is oil paint, but that doesn’t work outdoors. This mural has kept an artist without a studio sane, and it pushed me far beyond my comfort zone. Not to mention all the positive responses I received while working behind our house on the alley side of our garage. I’m from Texas, and Texans without a criminal record do not hang out in alleys, or think of them as a safe place to meet and greet neighbors, in fact meeting someone in an alley could be cause for alarm, but Seattle does things a little differently. I talked to more of my neighbors in the last five months than I have in the last five years I have lived in West Seattle. People stopped by to talk to me almost every time I was out there. I have heard that my roommates took sneaky pictures of me while I was painting, but I haven’t seen any of those yet.
Whether or not this mural painted in an alley in West Seattle ever has a large audience of fans or not, I have brought a bit of color and curiosity during a time when the world feels like it has exploded all around us, and we are so busy trying to pick up the rubble we forget that the sun is shining and the plants are still growing. It still needs a coat of varnish or sealant that will have to wait a bit longer, but I set out to do something a bit bigger than myself and I did. Now I have to figure out the next step I need to take to move forward.
Thank you to all of the people that supported me online and in real life, I did have friends and neighbors cheering me on, and that helped me keep going when I thought that I would never get to the end. Especially Colleen, Dusty, and the always supportive and wonderful Sharron! There are many more images of the process on my IG @melaniesinclairart, and FB melaniesinclairart . Let me know if you think creating a video of the painting process would be something you want to see!