Painter Robert Murray

Mural Marvel :  work fast to create nearly 2,000 eye-catching masterpieces

Leonardo Da Vinci completed the Mona Lisa in 10 years. Michelangelo spent four years painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. But St. Albert artist Robert Murray has both of them beat by a country mile, having completed 1,800 murals in the space of five years.

By this fall, that tally could very well reach the 2,000 mark, if Murray has a good summer. He’s already made a name for himself across the province with his murals gracing everything from private residences to office buildings and retailers. He’s also literally made his mark in St. Albert, applying his brush to such projects as the Medieval Castle exterior of speciality game shop Mission: Fun & Games and a family’s graffiti-covered fence on Sturgeon Road. 

It would normally take the artist part of an afternoon to complete an average-sized project that’s roughly 120 square feet, whether it’s a fence or a wall. Recently, it took him two hours to create from scratch a slightly smaller mural, with his brush clocking in at nearly 50 square feet an hour.

The speed is impressive enough, even to capture the detail some of those works require, although Murray places a lot of faith in his artistic instincts. “The hand tends to know where it’s going, and you trust the hand,” he said. 

“It’s not out-of-body, but you forget where you are. Once you are engulfed in that particular setting, you tend to forget the surroundings about you and just focus on that particular subject matter, and you just get lost in the work.”

Sometimes Murray gets so focused on his work, he simply can’t stop painting. Customers watching the artist go full throttle often ask him to take a break or grab a bite to eat, but he’s more inclined to politely decline their requests. 

While the experience of creating a mural might seem surreal, what makes it onto the proverbial canvas is far more authentic, an homage to the natural provincial surroundings that continuously inspire Murray.

“I really focus strongly on Alberta landscapes and wildlife, and also colour and shadow,” he said. “If you have the right composition with lights and colour and the shadow together, you can produce a beautiful piece of work in a really short time.”

That work has certainly put bread on the table of the commercial artist, who generally takes a client’s idea and plays around with the concept using artificial intelligence software. “I had a lady who has a store, and she wanted to create an image of the 1920s in Prohibition, with the dark warehouse and the kegs of whiskey and things of that nature,” recalled Murray.

“So, my friend A.I. helps me along, and I’ll set the parameters for A.I. to create something for me. And I’ll send it to the customer. Nine times out of 10, they’ll like the idea, so we’ll use that as a template, and we work from there.” 

On a few occasions, he’ll create a work on a whim, such as the time he came upon that graffiti-tainted face last October, which landed him scores of positive headlines. 

“It was more of an opportunity,” said Murray. “When I saw that, I looked around the surrounding neighbourhood, and thought that a fall setting would look really cool here. An hour later, we had the result on the fence, and the neighbours around, they  seemed really happy with it.”

Thumbs-up responses from locals aside, Murray still has his favourites, namely a two-storey bungalow in Lacombe, which he coated with cobblestones. Initially, Murray chided himself for being crazy enough to take on such a project. “I went back with my paint and brushes, and one rock at a time it came together,” recalled Murray. “It’s really become the focal point for the town of Lacombe.”

By far, his largest work is still a hockey arena in Lamont, which took Murray—who had a day job at the time—two summers to complete. “It was like endless gallons of paint, but it’s really a gorgeous depiction of landmarks in Lamont,” he added.

Murray, who calls himself an immigrant from Nova Scotia, studied fine arts at Red Deer College, but developed his taste for more impressionist works when he spent time in England as a Latter Day Saints missionary. He’s also written three books, designed sportswear, and even inked a weekly comic strip. By 1990, Murray started to devote more time towards painting, which led to a gradual shift towards murals. It’s the aesthetics of such works that he and other artists create, which continue to inspire and fascinate him.

“I think that looking at all the murals done all over Alberta, it’s a tapestry of our province,” said Murray. “It shows us who we are, our culture, the people and the landscape in general. It really is incredible.”