TIVERTON – Experience isn’t everything. So when artist Roxanne Blackmore was offered the chance to paint two murals, in a very conspicuous outdoor location, she did not hesitate to take the challenge. So what if she had never before even attempted a mural painting?
Her canvases were exterior walls at Dartmouth Mall. Management was looking for something with an ocean feel, and with a whale feel as a tie-in to very nearby New Bedford, the Whaling City.
The ocean? Whales? This was right in Blackmore’s wheelhouse.
Visitors to the mall since late last October have not had a difficult time spotting Blackmore’s work. One shows the tail, and only the tail, of a humpback whale dramatically extending above the surface of the water. The other mural shows a huge breaking wave.
A 2003 B.M.C. Durfee High School graduate, when she was Roxanne Gagnon, and now a Tiverton resident and mother of two, Blackmore since last fall has completed two more commissioned mural paintings – a bathroom wall and a cathedral living room wall – at private residences. She looks forward to doing more.
Blackmore has not adopted a professional go-big-or-go-home philosophy. She’s been selling canvas paintings for six years and considers that the “bread and butter” of her business, Rox Art. She has a studio in Fall River’s Battleship Cove neighborhood, near The Narrows, with occasional open hours.
How she became a muralist
A longtime lover of painting, Blackmore had little formal training, “a couple semesters of art school,” she says, before marrying husband Brett when she was 18. After the birth of her second child, son Shepherd, now 7, she found she had a fair amount of free time. She broke out her brushes and created paintings for her home. Liking what they saw, visitors requested their own paintings. Before she knew it, she had a business-sustaining online following.
Painting, she said, was for many years a “back-burner passion. It took a while to find my niche in the art world.”
Growing up, she loved not only art but beaches, Rhode Island beaches, especially South Shore Beach in Little Compton. Summers became almost synonymous with South Shore. Ocean scenes are frequent subjects of her paintings.
One of Blackmore’s ocean paintings wound up in the house of Mike Alfonso, father of one of Blackmore’s childhood friends and general manager of the Dartmouth Mall.
Last year management was freshening up the mall exterior and Alfonso saw a couple of areas that were, he said, “perfect canvases for us to do something with.” With the mall close to beaches, he wanted the ocean theme. With New Bedford just up the road, he also wanted whale. He wanted to showcase a local artist, but, he said, it was a struggle to find the right one.
“One day, in my home, it hit me,” Alfonso said. “Roxanne was the answer. I already had a piece of her work in my house. Her style was exactly what we needed. So I reached out and offered her the opportunity and we couldn’t have been happier with results.”
When Alfonso offered the job. Blackmore courageously jumped at the opportunity. Her father, had who painted houses for a living, was there to lend paint and brush advice.
“I had no mural experience and I wanted mural experience,” Blackmore said. “I felt confident. I was not nervous. I did my research, found out what kind of paint I needed. … I took a leap of faith in myself and they (Dartmouth Mall) took a leap of faith in me.
“I just knew it wouldn’t be a disaster.”
She said her posts of the Dartmouth mall murals drew the most comments in her Facebook page’s history.
Weather reports, color matching, a sore neck: What goes into painting a mural
Since Dartmouth Mall was an exterior job, Blackmore had to put her weather app to use looking for dry sunny days. “Each wall took two full work days,” Blackmore said, “early morning until dark. But only because I’m crazy and I couldn’t rest until it was done.”
She had color matching done at a paint story and had to add exterior rollers and brushes to her existing arsenal. She painted from the top down, and “by the time I was ready to start the next layer, where I had started was already dry and ready for the next round.”
Blackmore, 38, said mural work is a grind, mentally and physically, especially the large exterior jobs, where she also has to be concerned with what the wind might blow onto her wet paint.
Her neck hurts. There’s reaching and stretching and contorting like never before. The upper areas of murals have required ladder use. She hopes to be able to use a lift with future jobs. Daughter Arden, 15, is her “gofer” and has been a big help on the work sites.
Unlike canvas painting, where a step-back look involves just stepping back, the mural work means climbing down off the ladder to evaluate, then climbing back. Again. And again and again. Blackmore said that immediately after finishing a mural, she inevitably tells herself, “Never again.” By the next morning, she adds, she’s ready to hop right back on that horse.
“It’s very taxing,” she said. “But it’s very rewarding at the end.”
Blackmore encourages anyone interested in her mural, or canvas, painting to contact her at roxartstore@gmail.com or call 508-494-1370. Her social media handles are @rox_b_art for instagram and @roxartstore for Facebook.