Nelson International Mural Festival Archives

Raven’s Eye View

PJ Gilhuly worked with Hume School students to create “Raven’s Eye View” on the side of Hume School. Makayla Taylor and the Nelson Youth Arts Action Committee also contributed to the creation of this piece.

Turtles

PJ & Lyla Gilhuly painted this mural for the Nelson International Mural Festival 2020.

“PJ Gilhuly was joined by her daughter Lyla at NIMF 2020. PJ was born to Ktunaxa parents living in Cranbrook, BC, on September 3, 1975. Adopted by English/Irish parents, she grew up for the most part of her life in Ontario. After living away from her hometown for 30-plus years, she moved back to Cranbrook with her kids and settled in the small city and began a career as a self-taught artist. Most of her early sketches and charcoal work from depicting the human figure in scenes that suggest loneliness and suffering. Gilhuly’s expressive work is considered some of the most unique and appealing work and well represented as a Ktunaxa artist.”

Lion’s Gate

Tanya Pixie Johnson created this mural on the back of the Community Futures building for the 2020 Nelson International Mural Festival.

“It is my intention that this reference will create stylistic dialogue with other Art Deco design and architectural features in the city. The composition includes two cat-like sentinels and the suggestion of arches or doorways, water and tree or plant-like forms
These ideas are stylized to meet the design parameters proposed by the client.”

One Day

Sandeep Johal created “One Day” on the side of the parkade for the 2020 Nelson International Mural Festival.

Genetic Evolution + The Conscious Attunement To Our Divine Vitality

Created from the 2021 Nelson International Mural Festival on the Cedar Street retaining wall.

“Kai Cabödyna’s practice is rooted within returning to natural rhythms, dethroning patriarchal conditioning, cultivating community, exploring collaborative projects and evolving cultural paradigms. Overlapping and communicating through various mediums allows for his eclectic and adaptable process to reflect the way nature orchestrates it’s patterns, rhythms and flows.

If Mountains Could Talk

Toronto-based artist Steph Payne created this mural for the 2021 Nelson International Mural Festival behind the Bigby Place building, near Superior Lighting and Bath.

“Steph Payne is a Venezuelan-Canadian Artist, Designer, & Creative Director with a diverse career arc in visual arts, mural production and experiential space design.”

Raven Haven

PJ Gilhuly created “Raven Haven” for the 2021 Nelson International Mural Festival in the first-floor stairwell of the parkade.

Nelson Spotlight

Toner created “Nelson Spotlight” for the 2021 Nelson International Mural Festival. The piece features Streetcar #23, the Hume Hotel (before it’s renovation), the Courthouse, and Touchstones Museum.

Graffiti by Bacon

Located in the parking lot facing side of Dr. Kelly Davidoff Family Dentistry, Bacon used his spare paint from “Harmony” to create this quick piece.

“Canadian painter and internationally acclaimed graffiti artist, Alexander Bacon, was born and raised in Toronto and has become a renowned mural artist with over 20 years of experience. Using spray paint as the main medium, Bacon’s work has evolved towards deconstructing traditional spray graffiti techniques to create an abstract style while preserving letters’ shapes. The technique behind his work presents a unique painting style where he produces soft color transitions, blending abstract forms with realism and expressionism.”

Harmony

Harmony is located on the Highway-facing side of Dr. Kelly Davidoff Family Dentistry, painted by Bacon for the 2021 Nelson International Mural Festival.

“Canadian painter and internationally acclaimed graffiti artist, Alexander Bacon, was born and raised in Toronto and has become a renowned mural artist with over 20 years of experience. Using spray paint as the main medium, Bacon’s work has evolved towards deconstructing traditional spray graffiti techniques to create an abstract style while preserving letters’ shapes. The technique behind his work presents a unique painting style where he produces soft color transitions, blending abstract forms with realism and expressionism.”

Metamorphosis

“At the beginning of the ’90s, Ankh started doing graffiti on the walls of his beautiful native city of Grenoble, nestled at the foot of the Alps.
It is this mode of expression that led him to the benches of a graphic school.
Mastering these newfound institutional techniques, he gradually transposed his pictorial and graphic work to painting, without ever breaking the link to the graffiti culture that motivated this progression.”

By Ric Gendron

This mural was created by Ric Gendron and assistants in 2022 on the side of Pharmasave Nelson.

“Ric Gendron is a “paint slinger” who creates expressive artworks that blend traditional Indigenous imagery with bold colors fields. As a member of the Arrow Lakes Band (Sinixt), he creates expressionist, strikingly colorful images that chronicle his experience, memory, history, journeys and identity. Gendron studied art at Cornish College of the Arts, the Eastern Washington University and in 1983 received his art degree from Spokane Falls Community College.”

Wild Style

Montreal-based artist Dodo Ose painted this mural on the side of Civic Auto for the 2022 Nelson International Mural Festival.

“DODO lives his Art as a great adventure, where one feeds the other and vice versa.
His painting is the reflection of His experience. He is a visual poet whose mission is to break the boundaries between dreams and realities. It remains optimistic and aims to hold the viewer’s attention to direct him to a moment of reflection, like he is living a daydream.It’s also a way to transpose emotions by creating a bridge between conscious and unconscious.”

nenadneke babayoh

Damian John created this mural on the Vernon Street retaining wall next to the Salvation Army (down the stairs) for the Nelson International Mural Festival in 2022.

“Damian loves art as a way of saying something, anything! It can be important, mundane, fantastic, colourful, terrible, quiet or loud. It is through this voice that he believes some of our most beautiful messages are relayed to one another. As such, he is always working to create story through his art in line, colour, and composition.”

You’re My Mountain Flame

Turbo Bambi created this mural for the 2022 Nelson International Mural Festival on the side of the Nelson Leaf’s Recycling Centre.

“Blending the lines from backcountry to canvas, Bambi’s passion for the outdoors feeds her desire to create. Immersed in the snow-surf-skate culture, her work ranges from an eccentric & humoristic take on street art to a minimalistic approach. As a thrill-seeking mixed media artist, Bambi’s process is defined by the motto “Shred & Create”.”

Wild Geese

STYNA created this mural for the 2022 Nelson International Mural Festival on the roof of Kootenay Lake Hospital’s emergency department. The wall is visible from view street, as well as visible to the patients in the hospital’s palliative care ward.

“Wild Geese” is inspired by Mary Oliver’s poem “Wild Geese”.

“Christina Huynh is an illustrator and muralist based in Western Sydney, Australia that paints under the name STYNA. Her art practice involves creating murals, illustrations and picture books from differing mediums of watercolour, ink and pen to acrylic and aerosol.

Butterfly Effect

Jesse Campbell is a Métis visual artist and strength athlete. His ancestry comes from St. Boniface and Waterhen lake MB on his Moms side and from Scotland and England on his Dads. Jesse has been painting murals since 2010 and ditched a career in the sciences to work full-time in the arts in 2018.

“With the Butterfly Effect, we have these small reverberations that sort of magnify, and create a much bigger impact. And I think about that with species, and species loss. In this piece I want to sort of depict recollection, recollecting our place within the land, our past, and our tentative future. I do that by reintroducing these flowers and the native species that go with them.” – Jesse Campbell

Smooth Sky

The piece is an ode to blue skies! The sky in Nelson really inspired me. When I first arrived, I talked to the festival organizers and several people who’ve lived here all their lives, and they were all telling me how lucky I was during my visit because the sky wasn’t smoky. Since I got here, the sky has been a perfect blue the whole time and I couldn’t imagine this beautiful place any other way.
What it says on the wall is “may the skies forever stay blue”, over and over again. It’s sort of like a wish, that with climate change and rapidly changing weather everywhere, the hope is that we have blue sky days like these over and over again; that things stay this way. I used a lot of shades of blue in it; the majority of the shades are sky blues, so if you take a photo of the wall, even at different times of day, some part of the wall is always matching the sky.

Soul Terrain

Artist’s Statement: “This multi-wall mural was painted in Nelson, BC for the Nelson International Mural Festival. Entitled ‘Soul Terrain’, this was my ode to the mountains of British Colombia seen through my filter as an artist, exploring a semi-traditional landscape scene with transparency and vivid color work.”

Quoth the Raven, Nevermore

“Quoth the Raven, Nevermore” 900 ft2, acrylic paint, Nelson, British Columbia, 2020. Funding Body: Nelson International Mural Festival.

This annual mural festival is held in the charming mountain town of Nelson in British Columbia. The mural was inspired by the surrounding natural splendour and allure of the rich forest and wildlife. This colourful depiction of the raven will be the personification of the winged mystery that has captured the imaginations of cultures globally and for centuries. This adaptable and highly intelligent bird has appeared in myths and stories as the wise teacher, the trickster, the creator and the companion.

Artists: Lacey and Layla Art (LALA)