Artist Mehran Razmpoosh dips one hand in the red paint, the other into yellow paint and then spreads the colours in deft strokes across the mural.
Razmpoosh, who is originally from Tehran, Iran, was recently commissioned to create a mural on a wall at the Watershed Grill in Brackendale.
His hand strokes are adding final splashes of colour to the piece that includes mountains that, on closer inspection, transform into eagles, bear and wolf heads; Orcas frolic in the water under a burnt-orange sky.
Razmpoosh is back in Squamish after eight years on Vancouver Island painting murals throughout Port Hardy.
“I am grateful to be back,” Razmpoosh said.
His mural at the Watershed is inspired by B.C.’s nature.
“I see those colours around B.C. – sunsets and sunrises – and I came up with this design to match the building,” he said.
The animals hidden within the work particularly interest children, according to Razmpoosh.
“Kids come up to me while I am working and say ‘What is that? What is that?’”
“Children are my teachers,” he said. “When I talk to them, they teach me things I have never learned because they are new growing minds.
“This is really important for me – to learn from kids.”
Razmpoosh first started painting when he was only one or two years old.
His father was an artist as well, but he passed away when Razmpoosh was still a toddler.
“The first gift from him was all his brushes and paints and canvasses and whatever he had left. I had total freedom in his studio and that is how I grew up.”
Next, Razmpoosh will do a mural project at the Squamish Nation teen centre and teach an art class at a school in North Vancouver.
For more on Razmpoosh’s work go to www.razmurals.com.
