I recently walked over to one of our many parks because I learned that this past spring, murals had been painted on the backs of some of the baseball dugouts.
The one in my cover photo spells out our city (Weyburn) in symbols.
These works have brought art, colour, and fun to the site.
There are a few more dugouts in this park, slated for completion next year.
Sticking with my Monday Murals theme, I decided to feature a few from where we live.
This mural was completed in panels by the community. The artist who created it, made it a paint by number, so that anyone who wanted to, could paint a part of it.
That artist/designer won a $1,000 award for her idea and for including community involvement.
Each hand is holding something that defines our community, and the tiger lilies scattered throughout the painting are our provincial flower.
The sunset in the background gives a shoutout to our province’s motto “The Land of Living Skies” (our sunrises and sunsets are nothing short of spectacular).
This spring, instead of transporting so many things back and forth every six months, I chose to leave all of my art supplies in Texas.
I recently decided that I want some practice on brush stroke and acrylic paint techniques before I head back, but didn’t want to spend a lot of money for 6 weeks of practice.
Enter: Dollarama. I purchased all of the supplies in my feature photo for $16.59 CDN ($12 USD) and this is all that I need.
The paints and brushes aren’t near the quality of the ones waiting for me in TX, but they’ll suffice for the time being.
For now, I’ll practice on a sketch pad and poster board.
When we get back to TX, I’ll continue with folk art (my fave) on my “free” canvas … Palm husks that drop from the trees during big winds.
My current goal is to learn Norwegian rosemaling so I can paint those designs on the palm husks too. I’m not Norwegian, but hubs is.
This mural, also in the Cathedral Area of our Capital City, possibly speaks to times long ago (when folks still dried their laundry on a clothes line).
There were some distracting elements in the original photo, which I removed by cropping and by using the clean up tool in the native photos app on my phone.
Despite removing some of the bottom designs, I think the cleanup tool did an ok job.
The Cathedral Area in our province’s capital city is an artsy-fartsy district that a person could spend an entire day exploring.
From little clothing boutiques to sidewalk cafes, to a variety of bookstores, and to art installations on the walls of both businesses and homes, the Cathedral Area holds an “old meets new” sort of charm.
In a previous post, I featured a photo of a mural that I was disappointed in because I was too close, so cut off the end of it.
I returned last week and used the 0.5 lens on my camera and voila!
I’d often heard about the excellent meat offerings at the Ukrainian Co-op in our capital city, Regina, Saskatchewan.
When I Googled the address, the images that came up were all the incentive I needed to convince hubs to take me there to get some photos.
All sides of this building are covered with colourful and historical murals.
My feature photo shows where we parked our truck on arrival. We soon discovered that this was an exit, so we had to walk around to the opposite side to locate the entrance.
The walk was worth it.
If you’ve ever seen a hand painted Ukrainian easter egg, you’ll know how I chose the title for this post.
In the mid to late 1980’s, artistic murals on building walls here in my province, were a new concept.
In 1989, the town administration of Duck Lake, Saskatchewan had heard of another Canadian town – Chemainus, British Columbia (where a murals project had become quite famous) so a delegation traveled to B.C. to explore the feasibility.
The resulting Duck Lake historical murals definitely boosted tourism.
Now, these massive art displays are found on building walls in cities and towns across our entire province.
I snapped my feature photo in our capital city – Regina, Sask. Sadly, I was too close to catch the ladybug that was on the far right of this colourful mural. I always forget to switch to the .5 (extra wide) lens on my phone in such situations.
Hopefully, lesson learned this time.
Radically Retired 