I have recently finished a wall painting outdoors, a work which was commissioned from me by a locksmith at Oslo´s west side. The shop has been run for decades and is very well known in the region, it is located on an old apartment building from the mid of the1800s. The building had gone through a major renovation during 2016, and I was at the time asked to design and paint an artwork which would serve both as advertising for the business and decoration. The process of designing and painting was carried out during the last months of that year, shortly after the renovation work on entire building was done. The painting itself was made in silicate paints, a medium I at the time had no experience with, but which I knew was the best choice for use outdoors, in order to achieve durable results.

Sadly, the lowest part of the wall had problems with inherent moisture, which had accumulated at several places over the years; the surface began to crack and crumble gradually at many spots short time after the renovation, damaging my artwork. Retouching was not a good solution, and only total removal and replacement of the surface on the lowest areas would solve the problem. The repair of the surface was done by skilled masons during the summer of 2019 and had to stay and dry completel for some weeks, before I could start to redesign the composition and restore the damages on the original painting.

The wall was originally totally plain, but the later repairs and reinforcement added about 5 – 6 cm extra to it´s lowest section – creating an extra plan with a profile that cut the locksmit figure by the middle, ruining its appearance. My solution was repaint that area in a way that would make it look like a small balcony, where the figure appear to be walking behind it´s fence. I added some extra few elements and figures as plants and animals, in order to enhance the fence, give more depth, enlive and animate the scene as whole. That way I could overcome the problems created by the later repairs in a simple way without changing the original design too much, still enriching what was already done.

The restoration started at the end of summer and became increasingly challenging to complete in the following weeks, due to difficult working conditions caused by rainy weather, snow and cold, delaying completion with almost 3 weeks. I was having slow progression, but persisted on not let the problems compromise the quality of my work and finished the way I wanted and just in time, before winter fully arrived.

It am happy to have completed this project successfully, it provided me with valuable experience both technicaly and practicaly, and my clients were very pleased with the results.

Mural painting, outdoors decoration for a shop.

silicate paints on wall, 2016/ 2019

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Removal of damaged layers & repairing:

Restoration & upgrading:

Final results:

details: