Today’s post is of a mural I painted in one of my places of work, St. Anselm’s College.

There, I work in the music block moving dust around for a living BUT, as a way of making my time there less prosaic during lockdowns and term-time in recent years, I thought it’d be cool to paint a mural and brighten the place up a bit. (Feel free to guess who each artist is; I’ll give the names at the end of this post. Each artist has their own background attached to them, something that hopefully gives a clue as to who each of them are.).

In the mural, I wanted to include some different musical styles across different eras, as well as some who play different instruments. There’s a bassist in there, guitarists, a composer/conductor, singers, a drummer, a violinist and even the deputy head of the college itself! There’s so many artists I’d like to have added, but I had only so much space and the thing took me much longer than I’d anticipated (about a year-and-a-half in all, a year longer than I guessed). It’s over 6ft high and looks better in the flesh, so to speak (I had to take 3 different photo’s and stitch them together to make one image, so I’ve had to force the perspective in some areas, most notably, to me, around the top right).

Though there are things I’d do differently now if I started again (the conductor’s skin colour for one – it’s too dark), I’m really happy with it, esp. considering I very rarely use acrylics. Acrylics dry WAY too fast for my liking and it was genuinely scary to do. I’ll admit to questioning myself as to what on earth I’d started that first day I put paintbrush to wall. The only sad thing about the mural is is that it’s stuck at the top of the music block where hardly anyone gets to see it. I fondly remember, though, those parents and children who made the trek up those two flights of stairs during the few open evenings I worked on it who commented saying how amazing it was. I wish they knew how grateful I was for every kind word. Shame they’ll never get to see the finished thing.

Right, now for the roll of honour, left to right, top to bottom:

Freddie Mercury (Queen), Andy Rumsby (Deputy Head), Elvis, Taylor Swift, Sid Vicious (The Sex Pistols), Bob Marley, Nigel Kennedy, Jimi Hendrix, Siouxsie Sioux (Siouxsie and the Banshees), Kurt Cobain (Nirvana), Ennio Morricone, Ian Curtis (Joy Division), George, Paul, Ringo, John (The Beatles).

As a last thing, I’ll hasten to add that I’m not a fan of all those on there, just some 😀

I’m outta here.

Jimbob 🙂