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Mimosa Pudica
This mural features predominately curved, unbroken lines, creating the shapes of the raindrops, the human figure and the plant. Additionally, the work primarily has inorganic shapes, again creating the inorganic shapes of the raindrops, the subject, and the plant. There are circles used for the sunglasses and the figure’s body creates a sort of triangular shape within the space. The figure is composed nearly in the center of the mural. Further, the piece in its entirety is given an unusual shape; an oval being the base shape with the figure extending beyond its borders. The piece is fairly symmetrical with some extra weight given to the right side through the subject’s pose. The focal point of the piece is the subject’s face, framed by the pink gloves they wear. A muted, navy background contrasts the bright neon greens and pinks of the rest of the piece. The brightness of the neon creates an intensity that the mural as a whole emulates, while the color palette creates a sense of harmony throughout the piece. The repetition of the raindrops on either side of the figure also creates a sense of unity in the mural. The texture of the building is somewhat apparent in the mural, while the highlights and shadows on the subject’s skin and gloves creates a sense of smoothness and shininess. There is not much white space in this work, the background filled in with the plant and pattern of raindrops. The proportion of the figure is a bit distorted, the right leg and foot larger in comparison with the rest of the figure. Additionally, the size of the umbrella, being only a drink umbrella, is extremely disproportionate to the figure. The mural itself is larger than life, extending the height of a two-story wall. -
Sometimes Water Keeps Us Grounded
Sydney James’ “Sometimes Water Keeps Us Grounded” mural was painted as a part of the Chroma Zone art festival in the Creative Enterprise Zone district of Saint Paul, MN. Painted on a plain white wall, the mural depicts a detailed portrait of a young Dakota girl wearing a red shirt decorated with cartoon-like characters. She is only seen from mid-torso and up, showing mostly her head, neck, and shoulders. The characters on her shirt are a teal color and have a pinkish-coral hair color. The character on the left appears to be a woman holding and looking at a baby, presumably her own child. The other character on the girl’s shirt is a woman wearing purple robes; her hair is a lighter shade of pink than the woman on the left. She has horns on her head, as well as a halo hovering behind her head and wings on her back. The horns, halo, and wings are all painted in yellow, complementing other features of the t-shirt design. The angel is holding out her hand to show a small boy holding a star. Beneath the angel’s hand, “Hey Momma” is painted in white with a heart as well as a dedication, “Sydney’s Homage to Birdcap XOXO.” Birdcap is another street artist whom James wanted to honor in her mural. Behind the girl is her shadow painted in various colors. The horizontal lines of colors include shades of purple, blue, pink, green, magenta, and red. The girl’s shadow is given texture through dots of different colors and shades, as well as lines that give the appearance of stacked squares. -
Untitled (Little Ancestors)
This mural shows two children smiling with a background of mountain trees, and a rising sun. Focusing on the elements of the painting, we can immediately notice the scale of the various objects and characters in the photo. The mushrooms and children are scaled larger than they are in real life and appear bigger than the mountains and the trees, forming the focus around them. Furthermore, this mural is composed of a symmetrical arrangement that draws the viewer’s eye towards the middle of the mural, where the sun appears over the mountains. This mural is composed of character-like images and nature elements that lighten up the mood, interacting with all ages. Povi Marie’s bold graphic forms are shown with bold dark outlines; her forms are simple but still clear and stylized so you clearly pick out the elements. The pictorial space in this mural is shallow because of the thick lines, which make it look compressed and flat, and enhance the graphic look; this leads to it having no 3-dimensional aspects. There is a strong presence of lines in this mural. They are clean and help define the cartoons and other elements in the mural. The lines for the rays of the sun are noticeable, as well as the birch trees at the front of the mural. Color is a very important feature in this mural. The bright reds, yellows, blues, whites, and greens evoke happy and warm feelings and catch the viewers’ attention. The light and tone in this mural is consistent throughout the whole mural. The overall lighting is uniform, reinforcing the 2-dimensional nature of this piece. The overall tone is controlled with a few shadows and contrasts in the water and sky/mountains. This mural has minimal texture, and looks smooth in the characters, the trees incorporate more texture on the trunks and branches. This mural has a very geometric and traditional pattern using many shapes such as circles, squares, and triangles. This mural incorporates many elements, making it an eye-catching design. -
[Untitled]
The painting itself is very large, taking up a wall which is about 6 to 7 times taller than even the Silverado in front of it. The woman in the painting, taking up over half of the space of the mural is scaled up but has normal human proportions. She takes up a mirrored L shape in the bottom right of the mural. This provides her crooked knees and sat-up position to form a triangular shape in this corner. She’s in our foreground, along with the books we see by her legs and in her hands. In the background, we have a stylized blue backdrop with white text. We can still tell that the subject is the woman, and the background is a motif of the place which this was painted. She has a soft, delicate expression on her face as she looks, eyes closed toward the generic salmon colored book. We can see there is some depth present in this painting despite the abstract background, with book piles that obstruct the feet, placing them closest to us, then her body which seems as if her seated position is ever-so-cantered toward us as her arms are just a bit positioned to be behind her leg. We finally see another stack of books behind her tented legs and then beyond that is the baby-blue background. We see a few forms in this mural; the woman is the only human form with curvilinear construction. We see built forms of rectilinear books. Both are solid, and nothing feels delicate in the mural. In this mural, lines are present in this specific art style with obvious contour lines between the many sections that break up elements that make up each form. Bold, black lines separate the woman’s hair from her skin, the collar of her shirt from the jacket, and the jeans from the books either in front or behind her. We see lines, too, make up the dense pages or cover of each book. We also have lines present in the abstract background underlining the text “Wycliff”. In the border of the mural are abstract lines which look like an organic tear of paper. The colors of this mural speak “Roy Lichtenstein” with comically vibrant tones for everything in this picture. The vibrant yellow color for the woman’s skin, the deep purple in the waves and highlights of her hair, and the cool tones in her shirt, jacket, backpack, and jeans. This is somewhat contrasted with warmer colored books which also break away from the baby-blue of the background and its white text. The light source is not clearly evident, but there does seem to be an emanating overhead light as we can see her hamstring is shrouded in shadow and so is the area beneath her elbow and behind the backpack. For tone, we see that most colors on this mural are solid and do not have gradients within them, instead of meeting with a hard edge that either acts as a highlight, or which leads into shadow. We can see both if we either look at her lower legs: inspecting the tibias, the celeste color on her shins breaks from the otherwise darker blue of the pants, and if we look at the kink before the calf, we see the shade turn into pure dark for the shading. Almost every surface in this mural looks smooth to the touch, like everything is made from glass. The exceptions to this are the wavy spirals in the woman’s hair, and the loose wrinkles in the jacket. The comic-like aesthetic makes almost everything feel plastic. In unique contrast we see the border of the mural has a torn-paper feeling, that frayed and hairy texture that comes from an aggressive tear along paper. There are some patterns present in the stackings of books where we see most spines facing left and pages leading to the right.