Sixth Painting Session

Well, I think it's about time to introduce you to the "Other" murals.







First of all, the original mural, created by artists from the Vero Beach Art Club in 1969, and depicts the County of Indian River from 6,000 B.C. to 1969. More details about its creation can be found on the legend panel inserts of the mural. Interestingly, today delivered to me was a photograph of Judge Stikelether, whom I will be painting into the mural dressed in his famous Seminole robe. As his daughter Debbie was reading the original mural she noticed that it was dedicated to the memory of E.E. Carter, a dear friend of Judge Stikelether. And so they will both be joined once again, in perpetuity (or however long the murals exist) in the spirit of this project.








Pictured is the mural created in 2000, also by Vero Beach Art Club artists. This one spans the time of the earliest inhabitants up to the year 2000. Dawn Mill was one of the artists that worked on this mural, mostly the two center panels are of her brush. Her leadership and direction on our current mural has been invaluable. I will write more about both panels some time in the future.

Now to bring us back up to date.

Pictured is Dawn Mill layering more paint on her panel and refining the foliage. She has slightly altered her original design, which seems to be what we all are doing, letting our creative juices flow. Between the three of us, we are constantly coming up with new and innovative ideas to make the murals more interesting, brainstorming inbetween long quiet periods of intense painterly concentration and artistic pleasure. The end project is still a bit elusive to us, but we know it will be exciting, interesting and educational, and hopefully it will help to depict all that Vero Beach has to offer.

Here Christine Thomas is refining the lights and shadows of the water of the Indian River Lagoon. She has sketched the manatee and is about to add another one onto her panel.






Here you can see how Chris and Dawn have succeeded in segueing one panel onto another. After this point they painted in some spoil islands which was just the ticket!









I expected, again, to get much more done these 8 or so hours, but we made some decent progress. Unless we have some kind of push, this project just may take into October. At some point soon, when my new grandbaby is born (due any day), I will be unavilable to post this blog for a couple of weeks, but stay tuned! Next posting, God willing, will be Friday July 1st.

Judy Burgarella, Blogger