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'Art in The Heart of Runcorn'
Hand-painted, nature-themed, community art mural in Runcorn's Ridding Lane Underpass. Designed & Painted by local artists
Design inspired by groups at Brookvale Community Centre.
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*Thank you for all the support & kind words whilst painting*
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143 square metres over 4 walls.
This wall is a celebration of the ever-improving waters of the River Mersey and the return of otters and seals. An underwater theme was a big favourite in the workshops and was an opportunity to use the long shape of the wall in a fun, flowing design. Turns out this is a good wall for selfies too :D
The tree on the right is our solution to a permanent water seepage in the wall that's not able to be painted over, we matched the tree to the wet wall colour.
The Alice in Wonderland connection: the (invisible) Cheshire Cat, White Rabbit, Caterpillar, butterfly and Mushrooms are all nature-themed elements from local author, Lewis Carroll. In the 19th century, he would have known this area as woods and farmland, as shown in the background.
These individual elements were all suggested in the workshops, we realised they would work together as an Alice theme and the Cheshire Cat could represent our county.
The hexagons show that Brookvale housing was built by the same company who built the incredible Eden Project in Cornwall.
The wave graphics are taken from Runcorn's coat of arms and Halton Council's logo along with their teal and green colour palette.
The sycamore leaves and wild grasses can be found all around this area.
Several workshop participants wanted a bold 'Runcorn' element to show pride in the town and to connect the other images to the local area. We discussed options of 'Brookvale' or 'Halton' but 'Runcorn' was preferred.
This design uses the long shape for hand-painted 3D lettering: iron and anchor to show the nautical heritage.
To maintain a link between the tunnels, we have continued the 'Run' of the white rabbit and Cheshire Cat (and the horse opposite), with the 'corn' of the acorns, and the 'horse' chestnut leaf.
We repeated the coat of arms wave graphic and the Eden Project hexagons. The bee was also suggested in the workshop and lends additional meaning to the hexagons :)
Once more the water seepage is resolved by a tree silhouette. The lower area of this design has been adapted to include damp wall surface that cannot be painted.
As horse-riders use these underpasses and we have a horse chestnut element on the opposite wall we wanted to tie in the Runcorn canals and historical local farmland that would have used horses, our workshop participants included horses on their suggestions.
This is actually a single horse in a frame by frame running sequence, continuing the movement theme, representing the passing of time and continuous presence of the horse in this area. The run action links in with the text of RUNCORN.
The background shapes are used for: canals & waterways, hills, land and action lines. The hexagons: our repeat motif. The straw coloured shape evokes seeds/crops and works as a sun.
More local trees are represented with the pine cone/needles of the Scots Pines in Clough Wood and the Willows surrounding the underpasses.
The fastest animal on earth has been spotted in Runcorn: the Peregrine falcon, joined here by a workshop favourite, the robin. we were joined by a robin while painting this wall- no falcons though...
When our Runcorn High Street mural finally came down after lasting beyond the lifetime of the printed banner we were honoured to get the opportunity to add more art to the heart of Runcorn and help to revitalise a neglected area.
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