Pia's Place Mural
Last week, I had the pleasure of painting a mural at Pia’s Place, a new arts café in King’s Lynn. Pia’s Place is a café and creative space, offering arts and crafts classes and workshops for all ages.
The café has the aesthetic of a 1970s maximalist dream, with pink, orange and brown floral wallpaper harmonising with vintage objects and antiques. When designing the mural, I wanted it to feel as though it belonged within the space, borrowing visual language from the existing wallpaper, colours and patterns that Pia had already introduced throughout the café.
I painted flowers inspired by the wallpapers used within the space and worked with a similar colour palette. I introduced additional colours by tinting and mixing the existing palette, adding reds to deepen the browns and creating a wider range of pinks and oranges. Before starting the mural, I also looked closely at 1970s wallpaper and pattern design, incorporating elements of these into the composition.
Alongside these references, I wanted the mural to retain an organic, floral quality. I kept returning to the flower paintings of Georgia O’Keeffe, particularly the energy and sense of movement she creates through her close-up studies of flowers. I wanted to capture something of that feeling while allowing the mural to respond to the scale and character of the café.
The result is a funky, organic floral mural that feels connected to its surroundings and brings together the different colours, patterns and textures already present within the space.
This was such a fun project to be involved in, and I really enjoyed the creative freedom Pia gave me. At the same time, the project challenged me to work within an existing aesthetic and find a balance between my own visual language and the character of the café. I love how the finished mural feels as though it belongs there.
I will be running painting workshops at Pia's Place see poster below for further details.
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