Kimmerfields Mural
Public Art Project - Swindon
My biggest mural to date - coming in at just shy of 300 square feet (2.5m tall by 11m wide, for you metric types)
I was invited to paint this one by Swindon Borough Council, in association with Artsite, for the new section of Carfax Street in Swindon, in the developing Kimmerfields district.
For the next 5 years or so, as other routes are closed for building work, this will be the primary walking route into town and to the train and bus stations, from the east end of Swindon. It is a fairly long stretch of road lined with plain grey hoardings, and so the council has commissioned a bunch of local arty types to brighten it up. Eventually the whole road will be covered in art on both sides.
We were given a fairly loose brief for the murals - they simply asked that we represent Swindon heritage or transport or arts/culture/parks in some way. Other than that we were all left to our own devices and invited to come up with something that suited our own individual styles - so me being me, I went OTT bright and colourful!
I popped some train tracks in there for our railway heritage (the train in Tea One's mural next to mine looks like it has shot straight off my tracks, which was accidental but cool), and the colourful clouds started off as the steam from a magical steam train. Plus I had to include the local Blondinis statue, as my youngest son (now 20) was totally obsessed with the "circus people" when he was little and the statue was still up near the market in town. I replaced their usual balancing ball with mini clouds so that they could float up into the sky.
Oh and the big purple lady is just a big purple lady 🙂 kind of emerging from the colourful clouds, keeping an eye on things....
This isn't the easiest wall to photograph as it is so long/wide, the details get a bit lost in a single pic, so here are some close ups from left to right:
Plus me for scale:
Given that the main point of this Kimmerfields project is to provide lots of visual interest for passers by, as opposed to plain grey hoardings, I wanted to include some close up details for people to look at as they walked past, as well as larger more impactful imagery that works from more of a distance. Hopefully it works.
Here's a little "walk-past" video so that you can judge for yourself:
