Local painter working through the night to finish Canada 150 mural

Deanna Musgrave was wrapping up an eight-hour mural painting sessionas people filtered through the pedway to Saint John's Market Square on Monday morning.

The local visual artist's Canada 150 mural is taking form as her June 23 deadline approaches. It will take a fewall-nighters to fully adorn the walkway, Musgrave said.

I like the phase where I'm integrating it and just making it look beautiful.- Deanna Musgrave, mural artist

"I don't want to get myself to the point of exhaustion, where I'm not producing good work," she said. "Typically, I catch up on my sleep during the day."

Musgravesaid it is easier to work on the mural when fewer people are walking through the pedway, so she has adopted an increasingly nocturnal schedule.

Not a coffee drinker, Musgrave is fuelled by good rest and "an Epsom salt bath almost every night."

June 23 program

The mural's official opening June 23 will be accompanied by a performance of Skywalker, an original composition by Andrew Reed Miller, principal bass for Symphony New Brunswick.

While excited about the event, Musgrave said her focus is fixed firmly on the current state of the mural.

"I would be happier if it was further along I like the phase where I'm integrating it and just making it look beautiful," she said.

"To me, I get to a point in a painting where it looks finished and I spend hours and hours after that developing the colour, so it just has this luminance. I really want to be at that phase. That said, I have four more weeks, and I think I'll be fine, but it means going in early in the morning."

Celebrates local heritage

The mural is funded by the North Market Wharf Cultural Association, which chose Musgrave as one of itsartists-in-residence to celebrate Canada 150.

The mural, calledNest, features images of birds and a rainbow, mixed with symbols significant to Saint John a jellybean building, details from the Imperial Theatre and the spiral staircase in theold courthouse on Sydney Street.

"It's pieces that we have saved and heritage buildings that are at risk, in a hope to kind of draw attention to that, because I think that celebrating our heritage buildings is the best way to think Canada 150," she said.

Lots of wings

She also plans to have the piece feature 150 wings or 75 birds in celebration of the country's anniversary. Already, thepiece has 90 wings.

"There's a bit of a way to go with those," she laughed.

Musgrave's work has been featured in the New Brunswick Art Bank, the BeaverbrookArt Gallery, and the Buckland Merrifield Gallery. She also painted the over 15-metre-long mural in the Hans W. Klohn Commons at the University of New Brunswick Saint John.

As she put the finishing strokes on her Monday morning painting session, Musgrave said the experience of working in the pedway has been positive overall.

"People have been really lovely," she said. "I must've gotten a thousand smiles by now."