Художник Пол Арчер завершил серию из 148 муралов в Гранд-Форксе, посвятив последнюю работу памяти Долли Партон

Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... Paul Archer has made Grand Forks his largest portfolio, with his most recent mural a dedication to the late Dolly Parton. The mural is painted on the back wall of the Misty Mountain music store. Archer said he came up with the idea after Parton’s death on Aug. 25 as a way to remember the Queen of Country music. “After I heard about the passing, I thought it would be necessary. She was big enough and well remembered, and positive that it would be appropriate for me to do the tribute.” Parton’s Mural isn’t Archer’s first foray into public art. For Archer, painting is a passion that was discovered in childhood and shaped by his love for music. What started as a hobby, sitting in his living room, watching TV while drawing the cartoons he watched, turned into a full-time passion. “I remember Mom whispering to Dad from behind me, saying, ‘Oh, he’s an artist.’ For every Christmas and birthday since then, I would get art supplies. That’s all I wanted,” Archer said, reminiscing on his childhood. “I was driven to draw and paint since I was like, 5 years old…I’m not very good at anything except for painting. And I don’t even care. That’s my main focus. When I’m up on the side of a building, everything else disappears… I literally get the shakes if I’m not painting.” The artist has dedicated multiple murals to some of the greatest artists of his time, many of whom he has personally spent time backstage with. “I used to be a roadie when I was about 15, hanging around the back of the arenas, and I just dressed like the rest of the road crew, and the next thing you know, they put my name on the list, and I started loading in equipment for some of the biggest bands in the world. Big country festivals and big rock and roll festivals and all different kinds. I ended up meeting some of the most famous people and the people that inspired me also. And then later in my years, started working for them and doing artwork for them, backdrops for Black Sabbath and Alice Cooper and several others.” Archer has been on many adventures. The constant travelling has led him to spread his artwork throughout the world, including hundreds of murals here in B.C. “I have stumbled into those situations all of my life. I found myself at the Academy Awards. I moved to the Cayman Islands. I ended up painting all of the Caribbean. I met Sean Connery when I was painting for the hard rock cafes all the way through the Caribbean. I used to do rescue and release for birds that were injured from the hurricanes in the Caribbean as well, and rescuing animals of all kinds, almost like a green piece kind of thing. I bought a waterfall in Costa Rica. It’s just the amount of things that I have to fill a book or a trilogy of books is insane.” Archer’s story would be incomplete without his dog, Lannah, who goes everywhere with him, his very own partner-in-crime. He said, “She is equally as important as I am. My unconditional love in a little furry package.” “We go into children’s hospitals, and she visits all the kids. We go into dementia wards, and she visits all the old people eating their pudding. We go backstage at concerts…she’s so lovable. She’s just adored in Grand Forks, and everybody wants me to do a mural of me and her up somewhere. Maybe that will be mural number 150.” Among the many murals that Archer has spent his lifetime doing, his biggest portfolio still stands in Grand Forks. He took this city on as his very own sketchbook, filling pages with every new wall he takes on. “I thought to myself, one day, what I would like to put on my bucket list is to find a small town where I can see how many walls I can do,” he said. At the time, he had heard about the flood in Grand Forks and how the town was trying to restore itself to attract tourists again. So, after working on a project in the town, he decided to stay and continue painting murals to help bring back tourism. On his first run, with the help of an apprentice, Archer painted 33 murals. The year after, he did another 30 murals. Now, he is almost at his goal of 150 murals in the city, standing at 148 after Dolly Parton. “I love the people here, and that’s one reason I keep coming back. It’s because of the love of the small-town people. When I’m working on a big mural in Vancouver, people walk by staring at their cell phones, and I do a big mural here in Grand Forks, and people are coming up with their sun chairs to sit and watch and bring me zucchini loaf and give my dog treats…they treat me really good here.”