Now we’re getting somewhere: Watch SHINE muralists create

Part Two.

Artist Loretta Lizzio is four days into the creation of her contribution to the 2023 SHINE Mural Festival. The 90-by-25 foot concrete canvas, at 2875 7th Avenue S., is a dreamlike depiction of three women – alluring sirens with long, beckoning fingernails and come-hither stares. Lizzio started Oct. 13, and like all the SHINE artists around town she has until the 22nd to finish up and sign her name.

RELATED STORY: Watch as SHINE artists create murals in real time

Lizzio, Oct. 16.

In a rare moment of reflection, she stands on the ground in front of the work-in-progress – she’s usually up in the hydraulic lift, adding paint – and catches us up:

“It gets funner as it goes along,” the Australian artist says. “The first two or three days, it takes just pure drive to get through it. Because it looks like nothing yet, and all you just see is this big, blank wall. And you’re a bit anxious about drawing the image up, because you need to get it right. It takes a lot of focus.

“But by day four, things are taking shape and you start getting excited. Because it feels like you’re getting somewhere. In the beginning, it’s like you’re at the bottom of a mountain, and you’re looking up just going ‘Ohh, man …’”

But it’s not all flirty painted eyes and brushes of rouge. The sirens are ensconced in green foliage, all of which has to be created, too. “There’ll be days where you see heaps of progress all in one day,” Lizzio comments. “Then there’ll be days like ‘Not much has happened today.’”

Day Four (Tuesday, Oct. 17). “I’ve just been drawing in all the pattern work, which is quite intricate,” she says. “And it’s confusing to look at because it takes a while to draw up.”

Bryan Beyung (left) and Chihan Lee, making progress, Oct. 17.

Meanwhile, Canadian muralist Bryan Beyung and his co-creator Chiahan Lee, on the same wall but several hundred feet west of Lizzio, are making significant progress on Beyung’s masterwork. It depicts a Cambodian refugee family, standing on a dirt road separating one life from another.

The “parents” have acquired facial features, although the “children” – one of which is Beyung’s now-adult friend Andy, who lives in Sarasota – haven’t yet been painted in.

“Now comes the fun part,” Lee observes. “We’re really starting to paint. Before that, we were putting in a lot of solid colors, blocking in and mixing.”

Although there remains significant work to be done, Beyung says he can see the finished piece in his head. “It might change from what we have in mind,” he acknowledges.

Will they show the finished mural to Andy? the artist is asked.

“He’s been here every day.”