Meet the Muralist Amy Dolan

Budding artists at the Lewisham School of Muralism have been transforming walls in their own home this quarter, while their home learning continues during lockdown.

The Lewisham School of Muralism was launched in 2020 with the goal to train the next generation of muralists. However, with the tough lockdown measures, the school had to adapt and ask the students to create a mural in their own home, whilst moving their learning to an online environment. In this article we get to hear from student Amy Dolan, who tells us all about her project, and how it came to life.

"The concept of a mouse hole into another world came from some participatory sessions over Zoom, using a copy-lefting activity Patricio taught us on the course. This is where people use the first round of drawing to come up with an idea, and then the following rounds of drawing to borrow ideas from each other, developing them along the way.

The main consensus of the group was also that the painting needed to be engaging for my three-year-old daughter.

I decided to paint the mural in our master bedroom, which also doubles as a home office and, like most of our flat, a play space for our daughter. The wall underneath the bay window seemed the ideal canvas, as it’s on my daughter’s level and I thought painting across a corner would be an interesting canvas. 

A bicycle normally leans close to where I chose to paint and it felt important to complement the circular surroundings. Following on from the thought that the mural needed to engage my three-year-old, I created a participatory activity where we went on a hunt for circles. This was great fun and my daughter was drawn to objects that I hadn’t considered. 

She found a tennis ball and explained that the band around it was “a road”. I was inspired by this perspective of the tennis ball as a planet with a winding road, and so it became what the mouse hole finally led to.

My daughter’s reaction to the artwork has been quite tactile – she likes patting it. My partner, Ben, found that being involved in the design process made the project even more exciting, and finds it interesting how painting across a corner changes the perspective of the artwork depending on where you are in the room.

It’s quite daunting putting a mural in a communal, domestic space, but I found involving everyone who lived around the wall very effective in establishing my confidence. Living with it, it’s been incredibly hard to finish it and stop painting! But, having settled with the image for a couple of weeks, I like the new space it has created."

To see more of Amy's work, please head over to her Instagram @adolanart_.

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