Murals for kids, murals with kids, murals with adolescents, murals depicting kids… Dozens
of them I’ve done so far, but I never painted one for a specific elderly
audience. And I hadn’t really thought about designing one until I got an email
from a friend who wanted to sponsor a mural of a tropical garden in honour of her parents,
including an Angel’s Trumpet flower like the one they had in their greenhouse. Of
course I could, the only thing was that of all the mural requests I had
received, none was for a tropical garden.
I decided that a
tropical garden would be a nice theme for a nursing home or hospital. A wall was
quickly found at the Hogar para Ancianos
Fray Rodrigo de la Cruz in Antigua
Guatemala. This nursing home occupies almost a whole city
block at only a stone’s throw from the central park. It’s run by the Catholic Church
while the property is the Municipality’s. It is home to the poorest of the
poorest elderly people, some of them previously homeless. And best of all, for
me, they were very much interested in a mural!
Only days after
getting the green light I started painting with the help of Henry Navarijo, a
young Guatemalan kid who is a student at a friend’s carpentry project in the
nearby town of Alotenango.
Henry is a keen learner, wants to study technical drawing (as well as
literature and psychology, yes, the kid is ambitious!), so we thought this
would be a great opportunity to put his dream into practice. And a great help
he was! He first helped me draw the grid, very meticulously, and then painted
the windows all by himself. He also quickly and very capably copied part of the
plants in the background. We both had fun and Henry leaned a lot. I think he
now wants to study painting too.
I would have loved to
involve some of the elderly in the painting process, but they would have had to
stand on a ladder and that was asking a little too much. But we did have a
constant audience of residents who came into the room for their physiotherapy. The
feedback was very positive and we even got serenade by Don Saúl who didn’t want
to leave the room while we were painting.
Both residents and
staff were very pleased with the result. So much so that they asked for another
mural! That one will be much bigger and the location even better: the dining
hall. I’m planning on painting a double portrait of elderly people surround by
objects they might remember from their youth. I hope to paint this mural before
the Christmas holidays; that would be the best gift I could give the residents
of this nursing home. But… I’ll need donations! So that’s were YOU can help! Thank
you Wendy Russell and Nina Larrea for your donations. With another $250, this mural
will be a fact! (Smaller donations are welcome too!)
Many thanks to Lies
Joosten who sponsored the tropical garden mural, and Henry Navarijo for the great
help.
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| Henry Navarijo |
