Downtown Parksville just got a little more bright and colourful.
The spray paint mural on the building that contains Parks West shows Parksville Bay, with Mount Arrowsmith in the background, said owner Kevin Kinnear, who commissioned the artwork.
"I thought and it would be nice to do something downtown that would be attractive, that would be representative of Parksville,” he said. “It’s a big, blank wall that needed some special attention."
He's wanted to do something like this since 2019, he added. So when he spotted a van outside his store with 'art and murals' written on it, he decided to talk with the owner, Dan Martens, who signs his artwork “Danopolis”.
Martens has painted murals professionally since 2018 and said, in a way, it's easier working with a large canvas like a wall or a garage door.
"You get in the mode with one colour of paint and you just cruise through it and then you move to the next one," said Martens, who is based in Lantzville. "With smaller pieces you’re kind of playing around with a little more colour I feel like, and switching back and forth.”
He credited Bill Westwell for letting him use his work for the mural's reference photo.
“He was kind enough to let me use his photo for this as a kind of collaboration.”
Martens got his start spray painting as a teenager in Calgary and was arrested for it three times before he found a more positive use for his talents.
“I failed art classes in high school because I just wanted to do graffiti,” said Martens, who is self-taught.
He found success when he posed an online ad as a graffiti artist for hire. At the time he was the only one doing so in his area and he found lots of jobs. Now living on Vancouver Island it's been steady full-time mural painting for the past few years.
“It’s been nice to see the growth honestly," Martens said. "I never would have expected it to go this far, getting to travel around and do murals.”
He added he is grateful to Kinnear for promoting his artwork.
Kinnear said people have commented many times on the new mural and are pleased to have it downtown.
"I’ve heard various things from like ‘we really needed it” to ‘it’s a great addition’ to ‘it makes me feel safer downtown’ and so those are all very interesting comments," he said. "It’s what we had hoped for.”
Martens also does canvas paintings, which are on display in spots such as the Log Cabin General Store, Fanny Bay Tidal Tacos, Blue Fish Gallery in Port Alberni, and at Sound Heritage and Vault Skateboards in Nanaimo.
