Having a mural is really like living with a mural — you don’t ‘hang’ a mural as you do a painting or a poster — a wall mural is a living thing that takes over its immediate environment making surrounding objects fade into the visual background. It warms the room, removing your mind and your subconscious into the image, transporting you to another place.  Mural size is all important — can you imagine the lack of effect a muralist would have if their creations were the size of average paintings? Large images send stronger, louder messages than images the size of photos, posters or paintings.

Increasingly technology is enhancing what can be done with digital photos. Wallpaper and various other home decorating stores are growing their product lines of mural-type wallpapers, or photo mural products. Photo murals were rare just a few short years ago but are increasing in popularity and affordability. High tech mural products create amazing interiors that bring the outdoors inside or magnify images for intense artistic effect. Adding size to images goes beyond changing the ambience of a room; large images alter the mood of occupants entirely.

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I’m continuously amazed how murals and stories about murals either point to a project or source of inspiration or the complete opposite — “tagging” and graffiti writing landing perpetrators behind bars. I even read one story that confused the two — it made the “muralist” sound like an artist but police charged him as a “serial tagger” caught while painting “mural” (ref.: Cops: Serial Tagger Nabbed Painting Mural and Man Arrested For Painting On Bridge Wall). That muddies the semantic waters regarding the true meaning of what murals are even further — are they art or illegal graffiti? Even beautiful artistic murals I suppose are considered illegal if the artist has no regard for what is a legal and appropriate canvas, right? (more…)