|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
881 Main Street
Location Map
|
Location: NE corner Main & Euclid; South Face
Occupant: vacant
District: North End
Neighbourhood: North Point Douglas
Artist(s): Mandy van Leeuwen, Jennifer Johnson
Year: 2001
Sponsors: Take Pride Winnipeg!, Neighbourhoods Alive! (Manitoba), City of Winnipeg, Winnipeg Foundation
|
|
|
This Mural was part of the Neighbourhoods Alive led initiative in 2001 to beautify North
Main Street. It was completed in 6 days, all freehand. Mandy van Leeuwen: " I'm not
completely satisfied with this one. I wished we could have done more to it. We were
given a buffalo hunting theme to work with. So we were going to have a scene with
buffalo, and they've located the buffalo, they have the hunting gear the moments of the
pre-buffalo hunt."
Their research indicated the use of leather hides for the saddle. Jennifer Johnson: "If you
ever ride a horse bareback when the horse is sweaty, you will get hives or rashes all over.
I really enjoy riding horses and doing the training aspect of it. When you have a real
interest in your subject matter, your painting, rendering of it is so much better. Plus I
really like the live subject."
"On the bay horse there's a red hand mark on it. The reason why that's there is I kept
getting this one man who would come every day and kept telling us all these things we
needed to put in there, and I would keep asking him how do you know this or do you
have some research on it and he couldn't respond. But he kept telling us over and over
we needed handprints on the horses. So we did this for him. Whether it's factual or not
though is uncertain. I know a lot of the early Indians would mark their horses in
distinctive ways when they were going hunting to signify ownership or what they were
doing. But it was something we thought we'd throw in for him." Another resident of the
area approached them to express his concern that one of the guys in the painting had a
'really big nose' and was worried that the girls thought all indigenous people had big
noses. Jennifer: "So we asked him 'does that bug you?' and he said, 'no', and then he
was fine with it, after we'd paid a bit of attention to his concern. Another gentleman
living in the area came by to see us and gave us a bag, and in it were 4 cold cokes (it was
hot). He seemed really appreciative of what we were doing there."
Mandy liked working on the grass portion of the scene and tried out a few different
textures. Her distinctive style with trees (see also 205 Fort and 164 Stafford) can again be
observed here at the left edge of the scene.
|
|
