Mural project in Annapolis, Maryland

Sharon and Virginia trying to make sense of the inspirational images

hand stamped and re-touched flowers

No fear of heights allowed at this project

part of the antique wall painting in my families' building

We recently got a commission to do a wonderful project for a designer's own home in the Annapolis area.  One of the beautiful things about doing work for someone in the design field is that they usually have a strong direction for what it is they are looking for, and are willing to push the envelope in a creative way to get the best product available.  They become willing participants in the design process, and are good at giving us direction, inspiration and guidance during the project.  This mural was in a newly constructed homes' front entrance, stairways and landing walls. We hand painted a chinoiserie inspired landscape of branches, leaves, flowers, and birds over top of a beautiful blue linen woven painted finish which was applied by another decorative painting company.  Sharon Haefner, Virginia Jarvis and myself worked freely and directly on the walls, without any preliminary drawing.  It was a bit nerve racking at first, but as we progressed from first doing the branches, then to the flowers, then the leaves and finally the intricately painted birds, it slowly came together with the pale, grey, monochromatic colour pallete to create a most etherial and atmospheric feeling I was most pleased with.  I can usually be my own worse critic, but this job simply came together as smooth as any I can remember doing.  I had the benefit of being able to refer to and photograph some late 19th/early 20th century hand painted wall coverings that are in a great building my family owns, directly on Mt. Vernon Place in Baltimore.  The paintings were there when we acquired the property in 1976.   I will include some images of these early paintings as well for your comparison.  To make the job go a bit faster I had 3 custom made stamps created to apply the fine linear structure of the leaves onto a pre-stenciled shape which became the flower portion of the mural.  We still went back over the flowers with fine liner brushes to finish off the line work within them.  This project took 5 days, 6 hours each day, with 3 people working together.  The collaboration between myself and the other 2 artists was pleasant, and I feel very successful.  Please give your feed back on our work!  Best, David Wiesand