New mural brightens Whanganui's Maria Pl pop-up space

Dan Mills paints Jodi Clark's mural in Maria Pl. Photo / Lewis Gardner

Artist Dan Mills has painted a lot of murals of his own design, but he's delighted to be decorating a Whanganui wall with someone else's.

Mills began painting a design by Whanganui artist Jodi Clark on a freshly painted wall in Maria Pl on January 22.

He lived in Whanganui for eight years and his own designs can be seen in Castlecliff's Rangiora St on a dairy and library and in Drews Ave, opposite the old Chronicle building. He has also worked in Wellington.

The new mural will stay in Maria Pl - until its section is built on. Photo / Lewis Gardner

He has never painted someone else's design before.

"In this I am just a technician, but I'm thrilled to be doing it.

"The design is really good. It's interesting to take a piece of abstract modern painting and apply it to this. It's going to translate really well, and I think it's really unusual.

"There's something about it. I'm interested by it," he said.

He has roughed the design out in pencil on the wall and Clark has given precise instructions about what colours to use, so he has no decisions to make on those.

His other work is "big expressive oil paintings", which he also describes as abstract expressionist realism or existential paint-splattery modernism.

Town Centre Regeneration Project manager Ellen Young asked Mills to do the painting.

Her idea for the wall was to take the work of a local artist (Clark) and use it as a way to upskill others.

"Jodi had never done large scale, so she's learning about the process of getting something that big on a wall."

Young also recruited two UCOL students, who learned how to set up scaffolding and how Mills mapped out the design on the wall by using a grid pattern.

The empty Maria Pl area became Whanganui's next pop-up space, when she moved items from the previous one in Ridgway St into it. She is putting together a pop-up "kit" that can be moved from one place to another, as space becomes available.

She had hoped the new mural would be up and ready for Vintage Weekend, but said it will also be fun for people to watch Mills finish it.

Resene Paint has provided the paint for the mural, and the mural will be up until the owners of the vacant section build on it.