ST. PETERSBURG — On a gloomy, rainy Monday, Max Sansing had to prime the wall on the back of the church facing Fifth Avenue North. A rainbow of spray paint cans sat inside a storage pod, waiting to be used.
Sansing didn’t come to Florida with a complete plan for what he would paint.
The Chicago-based portrait artist had a figure of a woman and a palette in mind when he arrived for the Shine Mural Festival, which happened Oct. 13-22. He was invited to participate by the festival organizers in May.
He’d made a mock-up of the mural using an app that let him map out the “scribble grid” that helps him scale it onto the wall. That map was on a tablet attached to a railing on the lift, keeping his hands free to work.
Criss-crosses of blue painter’s tape made up the grid — it looked like a jumble to the untrained eye, but there was a hint of an outline of the figure.
Over the next five days, Sansing would use spray paint to create a mural featuring a photorealistic figure. His background as a classically-trained painter and a graffiti writer made this possible.
He was creating the mural for Trinity Lutheran Church (401 Fifth St. N), and was apprehensive about working at a church because he was afraid of being micromanaged or creating something cliché. But the folks at Trinity Lutheran were grateful to finally have a mural in the festival after years of applying. They not only gave him free artistic reign, but the church’s mission of feeding people became an inspiration for the mural.
The nature he saw and conversations he had during his stay in St. Pete would become details.
Here’s how it went down.
Day One
With the grid in place, it was time to sketch the outline on the wall with a grayish-toned spray paint. The wind was whipping the tape off the wall, but he was able to keep the sketch on track, using his map to know just where to apply dashes of paint.
In just 30 minutes, an outline of the face and body started taking shape. The next step was to refine the face, so Sansing started with a deep red paint. This would be the basis of the color palette for the face, which used red-orange, primary orange, red and yellow.
He called the deep red his “sketching can.” Before he began, he took the pressure out of the can by flipping it over and pressing it down. This helped him make quick strokes to define the features. He switched out nozzles frequently depending on what kind of effect he wants to get — a fatter nozzle will make wide swaths of color called shadow shapes, a smaller nozzle creates fine lines.
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Painting with such precision depends on timing — knowing how fast the paint will come out and when it will stop, and how fast to move your hand, he said.
Eventually the woman’s face came into detail. His model is a friend of Sansing’s who is also an artist. He commissions a friend to photograph portraits of his subjects, creating a file of references for his paintings. This woman has been in Sansing’s murals across the world.
After the figure was mapped out, Sansing took the rest of the tape off of the wall and called it a day.
Day Two
By late morning on Tuesday, the face had layers of rich red and orange. People were dropping by to check on Sansing and take photos.
As he worked, Sansing started feeling sick. He powered through, adding “color waves” near the face, which now had the appearance of a shaft of light coming across it. He ended up coming down with a bug — it wasn’t COVID-19 — that passed overnight.
Day Three
Wednesday morning, Sansing was feeling better. More progress was made, including background blues and greens. One of the abstract color waves became the leaves of an orange and purple “psychedelic hibiscus” that melted down the wall.
Now that the difficult job of rendering the face was over, Sansing moved into abstract shapes, playing with color and pattern the way the jazz musicians he often listens to on his headphones riff on notes.
While he worked, onlookers offered words of advice and encouragement, like, “you can’t rush art” and “you have a gift from God.”
Day Four
Sansing was in the groove, adding more flowers and color waves. He made a scene that paid homage to the church, with its arched red doors flanked by a silhouette of the building and palm trees, framed by an orange and purple cotton-candy sunset sky.
Day Five
Now on the home stretch, he moved onto the adjacent wall, where the figure’s arm holds a bag of fruit, Sansing’s version of a cornucopia. The pieces of fruit gleam with the light of a still life oil painting. His final touch? Gray silhouettes of ibises in flight.
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For Sansing, finishing the mural is also the finale of his mural season for the year, which has taken him from Minneapolis to Hawaii to Panama among other places.
As he packed up the storage pod, Sansing said he was happy with the outcome, despite seeing a few things he wanted to fix. But he had to turn that off, he said.
He was still thinking of its title, which came to him a few days later: “Shining Hope.”
