Dominican Republic Murals about to get started!

Stay tuned for the series of murals I'm about to paint in Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic!!!

The Universe, a Forest and Metamorphosis All in One

How nice to be back at Brillo de Sol! This special school for kids with special needs means a lot to me, so it’s always a pleasure to be able to make their learning space a bit more joyful. This time we decided on a mural in the corridor upstairs and we worked with a great team! There was Judy Sadlier, who sponsors a student at the school, her friends Gwynn Thoma and Debby Pate. We also had help from Cristian Rápido, Judy’s scholarship student.

No one really believed me when I said we can do a 18.65 meter wall in just two days, but of course we could The theme was based on the names of the classrooms: Universe, Forest and Metamorphosis. For the Universe part I picked a famous illustration from the Little Prince because it depicts a universe, for one, but also an erupting volcano. And, in case you didn’t know, the author, Antoine de Saint Exupéry, crashed his plane at the capital’s airport in 1938 and spent some time recovering in Antigua. Is that were the volcanoes on the little Prince’s planet come from?

The work went well, starting with the background for the Universe part. Then we moved on to the background for the Forest part, adding layer over layer of trees to create depth. A few deer and a scarlet macaw later and the forest was done.

The Metamorphosis classroom used to be the library and that’s what I had in mind when I made the design, but that turned out to be no problem at all. I had designed it with a stack of books (not irrelevant for a high school classroom) and a butterfly. I just added the life cycle of a blue morpho butterfly on a blank page of the open book and the reference to “metamorphosis” was a fact.

So, two days later of hard labour and the job was done! The school is running out of walls to paint, but luckily, there’s still a few awaiting a transformation.

Thanks so much Judy, Gwynn, Debby and Cristian for helping out (and sponsoring) and Ilene Kradin too, who was unfortunately unable to help paint, but helped out with the not unimportant financial part. Thanks to the Brillo de Sol staff for attending us so warmly and the kids for the positive feed back. I hope to be back soon!

 And maybe, -just maybe-, the next mural will be of a boa costrictor that just swallowed an elephant...