2026 Mural – ‘The Eyes Have It’
Our 2026 mural, started on New Years Day, is essentially complete.
How it was on the morning of 1 Jan 2026:
Goals of the project
- A fun holiday project.
- To beautify the rail reserve, for the enjoyment of us and of the community.
- To involve others in the project.
- To use the method of starting with end-to-end and bottom-to-top guidelines.
- To develop my artistic skills through careful attention to colour choices when colouring shapes.
Goals 1-4 were the same as for the 2025 mural project. Goal 5 was new, and meant limiting of the involvement of others (goal 3), at least in relation to colour choice.
Acknowledgements
The inspiration for this work came from seeing the work of artist Bronwyn Calcutt, who has done many works using a similar method – bronwyncalcutt.wordpress.com.
Artist collaborators who had a big influence on this mural are Michael Crowhurst and local artist and writer Raya Sato. Michael is pictured under step 2 below, painting the second end-to-end line, crossing the first line to create the Russian doll face and incorporating round and square loops and swirls. He also identified the dog – the first feature element to emerge. Raya was largely responsible for the feature elements at the left end of the mural – she wanted the swirls, she created the fish and Russian dolls, and she painted the bird features. She was also instrumental in getting me to slow down and paint more precise edges when colouring, creating a much more attractive finished product.
Step 0: Get permission
In 2025, I visited the three houses backing onto the railway corridor here to seek permission to repaint over the existing tagging. Residents in the houses on the left and in the middle were indifferent. The owner who lives in the house on the right was not a supporter of public art or tagging; he wanted his fence cleaned off – to be green like it was originally.
9-11am – Step 1: Overpaint existing tagging.
11-12:20 – My first step was to please the owner who lives on the right, and who wanted his fence painted green like it was originally. Since he dislikes tagging, I tried to make his fence unattractive to taggers – who prefer solid colour backgrounds, so a single paint colour shows up well. I used a dark green for highlights (using a flat roller on the corrugation ‘peaks’), after covering previous tagging with a light green created by mixing white sealer/undercoat with the dark green – applied using a corrugated roller.
12:30pm – Step 2: Spray-paint black outlines, using continuous lines from top-to-bottom and left-to-right.
The later outlines at the left end followed my rules less than on the right. Some lines went from bottom-to-bottom, side-to-top or top-to-top, such as the spirals and rainbow shapes (blue circle highlights). The infinity symbol (red circle highlight) was added to break up a largish space. One line did not continue to the edge (red arrow), which means my chess-board-style colouring concept would not work.
Step 3: Add more outlines to reduce the size of large shapes
Raya’s guidelines near the left end of the mural left some larger shapes (image below left) which I reduced in size by adding guidelines, including non-standard ones such as the infinity symbol and the bottom-to-bottom arcs circled.
Step 4: Correct errors in outlines (prior to colouring)
The logical sequence for this step is here. However, this step was not planned for, known, or decided until after colouring of shapes began.
Soon after starting colouring, I decided to adopt a chess-board-like colour scheme in which the same colour is repeated across diagonals at intersecting lines. With such a scheme, all intersections need to have four lines. This happens if all lines are continuous from edge-to-edge, but not if lines stop anywhere within the subject area.
On the shed, the initial bottom-to-top lines stopped at fence-height. The high portions were later additions. I later noticed that some of the top extensions were missing – red arrows above.
When completing these ‘missing’ lines, I wanted to retain the shape containing the pair of eyes. The one on the right was extended to the corner of the shed window (blue arrow). The other was changed to a bottom-to-bottom line, which became the outline of the ‘fence spirit’ – a feature coloured differently to everything else – with two tones of green rather than a solid colour.
3pm – Step 5: Colour in the shapes.
We left the left end with only minimal outlines because an enthusiastic participant, Raya Sato, wanted to be involved in the outlines but needed to take a break while we were doing them. There was plenty to do colouring in the right end.
Colouring in, I soon adopted a chess-board concept, with two colours alternating. The same colour needs to be painted in diagonally-opposite locations at each intersection.
The blue / green combination was an arbitrary choice, but it ended up making a nice transition from the green fence to the right. Similarly with the reds near the left end – an arbitrary choice, but nice for blending with the adjacent mural from last year. Actually, red was not arbitrary – Raya was keen for the ‘Russian Doll’ to have a red hat.
At some point, I decided on a concept for transitioning between colour pairs. This is shown schematically below.
Early on, I thought that this sequence would transition between the colours originally adopted at either end: blue > lilac > pink > red. As it turned out, the transitions were more abrupt and don’t really look like a gradual transition. I also decided to include a few outlier shapes beyond the limits of that scheme. Thus, there are a couple of lilac shapes instead of blue within the blue/green area.
The lilac/orange pairing soon failed when the orange paint ran out. When it was running too low to complete the shape I was colouring, I added a black bottom-to-bottom outline to reduce the size of the shape to match the tiny amount of remaining orange paint. This extra line created the ‘diving man’ shape. Under the black line, the pink colouring rather than lilac is another example of an outlier shape colour.
After initial colouring, I felt that more yellow was needed. I bought a sample pot of a pastel yellow which I paired with the lilac. Hannah, one of the volunteer painters, offered some bright yellow left over from painting her front door. Although small samples of the two colours looked quite different, on the fence, the difference seems barely perceptible between the pastel yellow paired with the lilac (after the orange ran out) and the bright yellow paired with the pink.
At some point, I decided to colour all the loops with a purple (the origin paint for the lilac, for which white had been mixed in). This led to a dilemma where loops were dissected by other lines. Two instances of this are shown above. I decided to whiten the purple where the loop was dissected, but in the example on the right it had to be lightened a lot to go beyond the lilac, which itself was a whitening of the purple. The example on the left is surrounded by yellow, so the specific shade of the lightened purple was not critical. The third instance of a dissected loop was treated quite differently as it became the Russian doll boy face.
Step 6: Seek out feature picture elements and welcome their emergence
The fish was a picture element that emerged very early, and on which deliberate features were added during outlining on 1 January. We coloured it blue on 1 March, to bring it out from the surrounding colouring. Raya suggested extending its tail in a big swirl below.
The Russian doll emerged early. Her existence was a factor in choosing bright red as a colour for its hat. Her boy (bottom highlight) emerged much later. The fish’s eye and the two doll faces were painted white to bring them out, there being very few white elements in the mural. Face features on the dolls were amongst the last features added, on 8 March.
The dog was an early emerging element, identified by Michael by lunch-time on the first day. Addition outlines may have been deliberately avoided to prevent disturbing the dog. On 18 Jan, the dog’s eye was added, deliberately in the corner, so it could have been a loop.
The fish and the dog feature coloured eye pupils – the only ones on the mural. All others are dark brown (because we had no black).
The green swirly ‘fence spirit’ emerged on 25 January after correcting the bottom-to-top line missing above the fence line. It is coloured using the same greens as on the plain fence to the right. Non-solid colours were chosen for the spirit which is a non-solid entity.
The eyes above transition to a large open mouth (red inside) with a purple tongue. Is it about to swallow the fence spirit? Or is the fence spirit emerging from the mouth? You decide.
In order to complete the mouth and shade red below the tongue, a new bottom-to-bottom outline was added, which created a big-eyed creature.
After colouring the fish blue on 1 March, I contemplated a second fish kissing the blue fish. But then I saw a red-faced masked bandit emerging which needed a mouth with teeth. Raya and I chose the masked bandit rather than a second fish.
The eyes began with three pairs, painted on 25 Jan. Painting eyes was new to me, so I started with small pupils using a permanent marker.
These pupils looked too small, so were later painted over to make larger pupils. When almost completed, I raised with Raya the idea of adding eyes to all the purple loops. She loved the idea, so I did it (knowing we could repaint purple over them if we didn’t like them). As this was new to me, I experimented with a range of shapes and sizes of eyes, assuming I would compare them and decide what looked best, then repaint the others. Raya thought the eyes made the whole mural come alive. And she loved how some looked like they were looking at each other. She also loved the variety of shapes and sizes of eyeballs and pupils. They all stayed as originally painted.
I painted two white shapes on 8 March – a vertical pair. I contemplated a vertical pair of eyes, and painted them briefly. But they didn’t do it for me. I next contemplated a signature panel. I painted ‘BC Art 2026’ in red in the top shape, but didn’t like that either – the middle is not the right place for a signature panel. I overpainted that in lilac to match the surrounding pattern – the leftmost lilac shape.
I love the face features I painted in the remaining white shape.
Raya showed me the two turtles. She gave them eyes to bring them out as features and I added the lashes. Much later (in June), The process of drafting this blog-post involved analysing and articulating what I was unconsciously doing. After doing so, I further brought these items out from the background by adding a white dashed line within the black outlines around the turtle shells.
One shape looked like Snoopy to me, and Daffy Duck to Raya. We brought it out from its by colouring it green, unlike its surrounds. This was later brought out further with a big eye. I’m still not happy with the small pupil. When I get a chance, I’ll enlarge it.
In addition to this eye, two others were added at the end – on the fence spirit. These span a gap between the shed wall and the fence, making them look spooky.
The bird’s face appeared to me due to a small hole in the fence at its eye. Raya painted the mouth, I added a larger eye, and Raya crowned it with spirals.
Artist Reflection
Reflecting on the outcome in relation to the stated goals, all five goals were successfully achieved. Compared to the 2025 mural, it involved fewer people (5-10 compared to 20-30), took much longer (6 months rather than 2 days), is much more beautiful and greatly increased my confidence as an artist, as well as that of my prime collaborator, Raya Sato.
It was an amazing project for me. For years I have described my passion as designing and making things. I have created many amazing and beautiful things. But only recently have I started to describe myself as an artist. I did not previously identify as a painter.
I have been involved in community arts – creating forums for people to participate and make art together – making lanterns (at the National folk Festival, with my niece and nephew, and with other groups). And I organised the 2025 mural which involved 20 or so community members.
My development as a painter started with painting over tagging on our fence on the shared boundary with the rail reserve. I soon learned that taggers prefer solid-coloured surfaces, so I started using dark and light stripes or a random mix of light and dark greens. (High contrast means neither light-colour nor dark-colour tagging shows up well.) My horticultural friend Marie encouraged me to plant things in front of the fence to discourage tagging. I’ve planted a hedge of bottlebrush now, and our fence remains free of tagging.
At the time (2017), I felt that growing plants was too slow. The periodic need to overpaint tagging continued, providing me a forum to develop my skills. I developed a personal style of painting plants on the fence and walls. Gradually, while overpainting tagging, I dared to paint more creative things – naive art. I liked what I created. (A more complete collection showing my development is included in an appendix.)
In March 2019, I found this ‘Kill Cops!’ message offensive, so I converted it into something fun.
I painted a specific artwork on our fence during Easter 2020 when I was not at the National Folk Festival due to COVID-19 cancellation. It is labelled ‘NFF Dreaming 2020’, and includes the NFF logo tent with musicians playing in it.
When the Level Crossing Removal Project was going to replace our fence, I didn’t want to toss my artwork. So we moved our west-side fence to our east-boundary, shared with a lane.
Last year’s mural was the first time I started with a large blank space and created a finished artwork. I was pleased with it and pleased to have included many people painting together. Colour choice was random, with the only stipulation being to avoid repeating adjacent colours.
The style of the art is inspired by the painting of Bronwyn Calcutt. Seeing more of her work, I realised I wanted to have more creative control of colour choice to create a cohesive whole. This 2026 mural ‘The Eyes Have It’ is the first time I have done anything like that.
Appendix – My development as a painter
