I painted this bee-themed mural for National Waterfront Museum in Swansea. The museum had a scaffold I could use to paint the 4m-high wall art, and I think it might have significantly helped with my fear of heights! I designed the mural to-scale on A2 paper and a photo of the illustration was projected onto the site, enabling me to quickly and accurately outline it at full size with a marker pen. After that was done I could take my time with the details using acrylic paint with an added hardener to increase longevity.
The mural’s themes are the importance of bees to our ecosystems (the museum has new bee hives on site), particularly food production, how people can come together and grow their own (the museum has a community garden) and how that coming together builds community. It will be part of an exhibition about food sustainability and security.
Leaving the house twice a week during lockdown to spend a few hours painting this mural in an empty museum was wonderful – it was something I looked forward to that broke up the routine and I just adored doing it.