Jon Murrill - Roanoke Muralist - 16 Blocks Magazine

Roanoke Muralist Jon Murrill is heading to Brazil to reciprocate and share his homegrown art with the people of South America. He spoke with us about the power of collaboration, excerpted here.

These collaborations have been great for me because I’m somebody that’s relatively new to being a professional muralist. I’ve only been painting murals for about three and a half years and I’ve been a professional muralist for about a year and a half full-time.

Her name’s Danielle and she’s a social worker in Roanoke City Public Schools. We titled it The Nightingale, a song bird that sings day and night, and she never shuts off as a social worker, so day and night she’s singing her song.

Thiago was painting the piece at the Wilson Hughes Gallery of the giant eyes. He’s painted all over the world and in a very different style to the European artists I had just worked with. He paints fast and we involved the community and made this in two days.

They allowed me to hop on the project and assist and paint with them and we knocked this whole piece out in 11 days.
This is a very high-profile piece and a massive project for me personally but also the mural streetscape of the city .

I understand that when you’re working with high-profile artists you’re their understudy.
I’ve done a decent amount of work over the past year,I told them I don’t mind washing your brushes out or carrying your paint cans, you tell me what you need, and that translated into them allowing me to paint this piece with them, and get to see and experience their techniques.

I’m so grateful I have the humility to be there purely for the enjoyment of learning.
This was not a commissioned piece. They paid me in their own way. They gave me a lot of materials when they left which is great, but really I got paid in experience here, which is so incredibly valuable, learning and being open to learning, and just opening those doors.

“Folks now get the power of the City’s mural projects in helping to re-envision areas ripe for investment and rally community energy.
We’re hoping to get even more art onto neighborhood walls and to get more emerging artists involved.
We love the opportunity to help our local artists grow.”
Douglas Jackson
Arts and Cultural Coordinator
City of Roanoke