Introduction

studio reflections

The first mural I painted in the mid 1970's was, well, to say it was "lousy" would be an insult to lousy paintings everywhere  - everything was out of proportion.   The painting looked great from three feet away, but from the 25 foot distance (the closest distance that anyone ever viewed the painting) it looked strange and disproportionate.  I was lost in detail.  Thankfully it was a quick, temporary mural (not to mention - free) painted to dress up a condemned building until it could be torn down - the building was torn down a year later, destroying the evidence. All photographs have since been conveniently lost.  My first mural stank (kindest possible word), but I loved painting it and to my surprise, most  thought it was distorted on purpose, there was a certain consistency to the distortion and the colors and painting style were advanced enough.  Most thought I'd used some artistic license and it must have a nebulous "higher meaning" only comprehensible to an educated few - a bold statement on the pressures of impending reality distorting the idealism of youth.  I got a real kick out of the explanations of those who thought they understood.  Of course I never told them that it was distorted because I didn't have a clue what I was doing - I think that would have broken some unwritten artists code.  Only one person ever looked at the painting and knew why it was the way it was.  A nice old guy who had been a billboard artist all of his life hit the nail on the head when he said, "never backed up once while you were paintin' it, did ya?"  At any rate, I learned a lot about what not to do.

     Painting murals is much different from painting smaller works.  A person is completely overwhelmed and absorbed by the painting itself.  Much like those who do large scale sculpture who I've talked with, the scale of the work makes me think of myself more as a craftsman than an artist.  Painting murals is somewhere between fine art and house painting.  It's hard to get too snooty when you're up several stories on a scaffold with the wind blowing twenty-five miles per hour, covered in paint and eating lunch out of a paper bag.

     The biggest plus to being a muralist has been the quality and diversity of people I have met along the way.   Most of those I now count as my best friends were my customers first  - in fact, I first met my wife while painting a public mural and she commissioned two pieces before we started dating (who says good customers don't get preferential treatment!)  Those who commission art are most often extremely intelligent people with a true love for the arts and at least some tolerance for the eccentricities of artists.  I would never have met such a fine and varied group in any other walk of life.

     In the minus column (and this is nothing compared to the advantages, even though this section will be longer)  although I'm seldom asked to paint anything I don't at least like, I don't always get to paint the design I would most like to paint.   Customers often have very specific designs or subjects they would like to have painted, and I can't blame them a bit.  If I were paying my hard earned money to someone I didn't know to paint a mural, I would darn well want them to paint what I wanted to have on my wall.  Although I now have customers who tell me to paint what I want to paint and just tell me how big they want it - this is rare when you are starting out.  These are usually repeat customers or referrals from old customers who trust me implicitly and are either planning to decorate around the painting or know that I will design my painting around their interior.
     Another minus is the hours - they can be very long and there are often deadlines.
    The final downside (and this is why I specialize in murals on canvas for private homes and offices) occurs when producing public art.  Public art will be viewed by everyone, not just those with the intellectual capacity to understand it.  Misunderstandings will occur regardless of how clear the message seems to most viewers.  Those with the sickest minds will see sickness wherever they look.  A project that involves a very nicely done painting by my assistant (Amanda Alders) of Adam (the guy from the bible who ate the apple) as a wrinkled old man (implication of wisdom), using sign language by pointing toward his eyes with one hand and toward the light at the end of the artistically portrayed tunnel with the other to implore people to "look toward the light" in the most clear terms possible using only visual imagery.  Some (only those who claim to be the perfect Christians - often evangelical preachers or small town politicians) have been unable to comprehend this, and feel it should be destroyed.  There were even, as I understand it, sermons about the "evil" painting. They saw it as an evil old monster about  to poke his own eyes out - they never even tried to figure it out!  Luckily, most understand the significance immediately - even most children above the age of six have had little problem grasping it.  Although this type of thing can occasionally occur in the larger cities, it is primarily a problem when painting in smaller towns with poor educational systems and a "big fish - small pond" mentality.  I would suggest all aspiring muralists avoid public work in small towns when at all possible.  I'm still waiting to find out what kind of twisted meaning someone is going to extract from the team of poodles pulling a sweet little old lady on a cart driven by a monkey through an art gallery that I painted this morning.  The only upside to this phenomena is that you can tell right away with whom you never want your children to be alone.
When I retire,  I can paint  only the designs that I want to leave with the world, without worry about selling them and without concern over how long they took to paint - if someone buys them, fine - if not, I can feel good that I had the chance to paint them and feel fairly certain that they will find homes someday,  whether or not I'm around to see it.  I just feel lucky to have been able to spend my life doing what I love.

       I happen to think the world needs more murals.  Now that I'm older, graying and heading toward my codger-hood, I can honestly say with what could be acquired wisdom (or it could be gas, I can't tell) that competition makes us all better.   The gallery option is still open to you if you like it.  I sometimes sell my smaller finished mural designs through galleries but the wide variation of styles can confuse the average art buyer (that's part of the reason this company is called Liquid Murals instead of Doug Myerscough Murals) - the gallery thing seems better for the artists who only paint in one style and (most of the time) have a second source of income.  In the course of the average week I might paint in half a dozen different styles - some are combinations of established styles and some are  something brand new I invent to match the subject, the customers personality, or how I'm feeling that day.  It is fun and it keeps me creative.  I noticed many years ago that the art world tries hard to box artists in to one style,  to recognize at a glance who did the painting.  Once your work starts to sell, the gallery owners want you to keep cranking out the same type of work over and over.  Much of my formal education was in music composition (scholarship was in multimedia production), we used to say of composers whose work always sounded the same after they achieved some notoriety that "they wrote a good piece once and have been writing it ever since."  I see artists who repeat themselves much the same way - I understand the pressure the visual artist feels to work in this formulaic manner but I don't agree with it.  I tried for a time to work that way the first time one of my styles found ready buyers but it bored me to tears,  becoming stale - like factory work.  I suffered and so did the art.  Piccasso re-invented himself many times - it kept him fresh and gave him a very long career and only late did he descend into self-indulgence, painting whatever worthless nonsense came to mind because he knew it would sell if he signed it.  I have tried to reinvent my art daily.  Had I not, I would have quit long ago.  I do long, open ended series in similar styles but many pieces in the same series still look like they are painted with a different hand (as well they often are, I paint both right and left handed)  or a different artist altogether - drawing their consistency more from choice of subject matter than from technical style.  Perhaps the only thing that I can see as usually still present in my painting from childhood forward (regardless of style) is optical mixing of colors and a shifting or exaggeration of colors from what is real, to what makes me feel engaged,  from a distance the work can look much like the colors are realistic and blended on the palette, up close they are often not.

     There seems to be a conception that true artists must starve, be miserable, wear all black and have drug problems.  I'm probably the happiest guy on the planet, love life, don't take drugs, wear black only when it's a gift, and I eat like a Clydesdale - I guess I'm not a true artist, but whatever it is I do, I love it.  A good friend of mine has a slogan at the end of all of his e-mail - "Do what you love for a living and you'll never work another day in your life."  He owns and operates a hotel in the Caribbean and loves it.  Whatever you do, may you all find happiness in your unemployment while making the world a more beautiful place.

If you haven't fallen asleep yet and are a glutton for punishment, you can find more about my philosophy of art on the "Call for Artists and Vision Statement for Liquid Forest Galleries"