Dormliving Mural Painting
An entry that I've been meaning to get online but haven't quite had the time to do so with:
In the course of my and my roommates' living we've discovered that, however good the dorm-apartments at MICA are, they are still filled with white walls. A few of the students around MICA's Commons (lower classmen living complex) have painted murals on their white homosote walls in the living rooms, adding a bit of character to the space.
I decided to take a swing at this. This painting, which is probably seven feet high, went through three revisions (two of which I have pictures of, including its present state). It, combined with a sizeable IKEA light that gives the whole living room a warm, spacious glow, totally opens up the space and provides a great conversation piece—along with a declaration of belief fertile for daily contemplation: "We create the world."
The painting in its first stages:
And then, after some touching up of the face and a stronger color scheme, everything gets filled out.
I'm especially fond of the balance between the Om symbol and the Celtic Cross, providing two great mystical tradtions of two great world religions in a precarious but solid balance, ushering the viewer to question their own beliefs in light of the painting's situation. I love watching people walk into the room for the first and stare up at the mural—I've already gotten some neat conversations via it and am very happy with it, even though the style is much different than my typical work. It now covers the obscene cartoons and doodles that the roommates and some friends had put on the homosote and had haunted our living room for about a week—even the roommates themselves were getting tired of seeing naked cartoon ladies in the morning. They allowed me the full reign of the wall, and thus far they all seem to be pleased with what I've put there. I'm glad they allowed me the privelage, for now we have something much more thoughtful and poignant to consider in the mornings than full fantasies—we must now entertain the complex of our very existence in this world and how we shape it; this choice is up to us. We create the world. How, then, should we live? What do we create?