2009-05-08T17:47:00.000-07:00

Not too many people know that I've painted murals in several of my homes.
My first one was in a powder room in my last house. One day I looked around and thought it might look nice if I painted vines going up the walls, and maybe a nice landscape that you'd see as soon as you opened the door.
The tiny second floor hallway was also hard to decorate. I had hung some pictures, but it didn't help, so I painted a mural there too.
I'll show them to you later.
Right now I'm going to show off the mural I painted in the upstairs hallway of my present home. It took me at least an entire summer to paint. I call it the Maine mural, because it works it's way from the hilly countryside down to the sea.

Here we are at the bottom of the stairs.
Here's a closer view of this section. The scene is based on an old photograph I found.
Next here's a view of the hallway as we round the corner at the top of the stairs.
And now we're looking back down towards where we just were.
This section is outside my bedroom door. The white you see in the upper left is the ceiling of the stairwell.
Here's the center section of this wall.
Where's getting closer to the sea now, the land is flattening out a bit.
Ah, here we are at the rocky coast of Maine, with a little island lighthouse. My son can see this section through his open bedroom door.
Here we have a couple of fellows out sailing.
Ol'Cap enjoys telling stories to the little lads.

Now we're in town. This part of the painting is based on old photographs of the town where I live.
The brick building that's in the shadowy part of the picture is no longer standing. It originally stood here, at the crossroad, but later they moved it across the street and facing the other way. Moving buildings seems to be a tradition in Maine, but moving a large brick building must have been a real sight to behold.
Now the Town Hall stands on this spot, the brick building pictured is gone altogether.
The road that's meandering out of sight is the road to Kennebunkport. The green building on the right is based on one that used to stand around that spot, but I made up the houses to look like some that used to stand there.
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The next year I painted a mural in my son's bathroom. It all started with some cheap ceramic fish plaques. One of them is in the picture below.
I bought 3 of them and planned on hanging them in the bathroom, because my son liked fish. Well, of course, I then started thinking, wouldn't these fish look great if I painted the walls to look like the ocean? From there it was a short step to looking for pictures of sealife to add to the bathroom ocean.
I really liked how the sea turtle came out. My son kept asking if I was going to put in a shark, so I did, but it's way up near the ceiling, so all the other fish would be safe.
There's even some sunken treasure.
I had found a fishy shower curtain. These pictures were taken several years ago, and since then I've had to replace the shower curtain, but I did find another fishy one.
More fishies at the bottom of the sea.
And here's another picture with the sunken treasure.
Here's another of those ceramic fish that started the whole thing, and little clown fish gamboling around the bathroom sink.

A couple of happy killer whales, or orcas.

And this is the end.

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The following are photos of my first mural that I did in the tiny powder room. The pictures are pre digital camera.

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This is the mural in the little hallway of my old house.
Here's the view going up the stairs.
And now you can see the whole hallway, with my skinny linen closet at the far end.
I painted a tree with some happy bluebirds.
And for some reason I just had to stick in this gentlemanly rabbit.

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Oh, what the heck, as long as you're here, I might as well show you some of my paintings. I don't have photos of all of them, just the ones I took because I wanted to send them to my mom so she could see what I was up to. She always wanted me to continue my painting.

The first one is The Hawk, done in oils. I like painting from photographs, especially if it's a portrait, because I'm a slw painter and real people just can't stay still long enough.
The next painting is also in oils, and a companion piece to the one above. I'm not sure if I ever named it. If I did, I don't remember what it's called.
The following pictures are watercolors, which were a new medium to me.

This is a view of Kennebunkport. I changed one building. I didn't like what was there, so I just substituted something else.
I took some great pictures of my son climbing and wading in the pools at the ocean when he was little. This painting was done from one of those photos.

Next is the original large size version of In The Woods. I also painted a miniature copy.
This is greater downtown Kennebunkport in mid winter.
Neither of the two subjects in this painting like it. My son was 2 and my daughter was 14, but it's one of my favorites.

The last painting I have a photo of is an abstract I did for a bathroom. I had a nice white frame and I needed to fill it with something quickly. I liked the way it turned out. My son pointed out that it was a picture of a fish.

Murals..and some paintings