Edmonton artist bringing positivity with outdoor murals

EDMONTON (CityNews) – In one way or another, the pandemic has taken a toll on people in almost every profession.

Edmonton artist Lorraine Shulba has seen it firsthand.

When restrictions allowed, Shulba started hosting private art shows at her gallery and eventually came up with the idea to paint outdoor murals on anything and everything from the walls of people’s garages, sheds and fences to the outside of office buildings.

“In the last two years, a lot of my shows have been cancelled, so I was like ‘okay what am I going to do about this?!'” said Lorraine Shulba, Artist with Red Sparrow Gallery.

“It was great! People really loved how art uplifted them. They realized that without travel or live music ‘okay what else do we have? Well, we have art? let’s make our homes beautiful’.”

Her main goal was to bring some light and positivity to outdoor spaces around the city after the darker times the pandemic brought.

“One thing COVID really made people realize is art is important, self-expression is important,” she explained. “To see when that person comes out and looks at how I’ve transformed their yard, it’s amazing brightening people’s lives.”

Shulba is hoping to inspire others to get creative through art and use of colour as we continue to make our way through the ongoing pandemic exhaustion.

“Just sitting there with music while you do art, it’s transforming and so powerful.”