Chicago murals: Face of garage door in Near West Side's alley signifies calm in chaos
A boy stares out from over his hands, crossed over each other, chin resting behind them on a teal table. The boy is painted in gray scale but the space behind him is all kinds of crazy colors and shapes.
That’s the kind of painting that British-born Chicagoan Daniel Wilson likes to create — a calming presence in front of chaos.
“I make paintings to remind people of our shared humanity,” Wilson says. “That’s why I tend to create. I try to create visual empathy, to highlight people or issues or something like that that might have been overlooked."
For this painting, featured on a Lexington Avenue garage door in the Tri-Taylor neighborhood on the Near West Side, Wilson says he didn’t know the boy or feature him for a specific reason, except to remind folks of the children and people who live in the neighborhood. The “chaotic, graffiti-ish, taggy background” is one that occasionally shows up in his work, he says.
Wilson moved to Chicago in 2017 to be with the woman who is now his wife. He was a newspaper photographer in the United Kingdom, he says, and was thrilled to move to Chicago and see the street art and murals by artists he already followed on social media. Now he paints his own murals and has displayed work in galleries and group shows around the city.
“It’s been a lovely art scene that has welcomed me” here, he says.
Wilson typically paints portraits, “almost like passport photos,” he says. He’s drawn to those that look like a head shot, straight on with head and shoulders in the frame and eyes looking toward what, in a photograph, would be the camera.
He also enjoys storytelling through his work with more going on than just the profile — like a graffiti background, for example.
Wilson typically uses both spray paint and brush-painted acrylics in his murals, he says. Along with Tri-Taylor, where he lives, his work can be found on West 16th Street and South Racine Avenue in Pilsen and alongside the many murals on West Hubbard Street in Fulton Market. Aside from painting, he taps his photography background to make collages and art zines, among his other creative projects.
The Tri-Taylor garage door is one of about 30 garage doors with murals along the 2500 block of West Polk Street and West Lexington Avenue. The project started with 15 murals in 2021, and continued to grow with the housing development. Wilson added his in 2022.
Sara Dulken with Chicago Truborn gallery oversaw the alley mural project. “Not only can homeowners enjoy it, but people have made that a destination in Tri-Taylor to go see all the murals,” Dulken says.
Garage door murals are “a great way to integrate original artwork and originality into your home,” she says. “Express yourself on the outside.”