New Years Day Mural – 1 Jan 2025

Sitting at our dining table, Antigone sometimes seemed distressed by the tagging and graffiti on the fence opposite our house.

With a view to replacing that tagging with something more beautiful, I knocked at the door of the house which had the offensive tagging on its back fence.  The guy living there said he had no problem with us changing it.  He said the owner lived next door.  The owner was not home, but we had the ’OK’ from the resident.

I decided to make it a collective community artwork and to use a style I had learned from artist Bronwyn Calcutt – starting with continuous (non-straight) lines from left to right not crossing each other and from top to bottom, then colouring within the lines to make a colourful work of art.

The morning of New Year’s Day seemed a perfect time to do the art.  People were around due to the holiday and normal activities were on hold.

I painted over the tagging with white paint.

Then I started the lines.  Being a corrugated steel surface, spray cans had to be used to get smooth lines.

As people passed by, I invited them to join in with the project.  Before long, we had many lines – possibly too many in retrospect.

Then we filled them in with colours, attempting to avoid adjacent areas of the same colour.

As more colours were added, a beautiful work of art was created.

We finished the project on 2 January.  Making this in two days, involving dozens of people, was satisfying. 

It has been relatively tag-proof; eleven months later, only one small tag has been painted on this community art.

I plan to coordinate a similar work this coming New Years Day, to the right of this one. I checked with the neighbours. The chap in the next house along had no problem with it, and the owner, further to the right asked that his fence be painted back to its original colour, so we’ll do that too. Anybody interested is invited to come join us.