Another Maltby

Here's another mural by local artist Jeff Maltby. This one is on one wall of Ellice Recycle Ltd., a recycling company near Point Ellice. At 152 feet (about 46 meters) wide this is probably Maltby's largest work. Even with my wide angle lens at its widest I wasn't able to get the whole mural in though the photo above has about 90%. (Of course I never thought to use the panorama function of my camera, which would have been perfect for this!) As usual, the artist offers us a historical perspective, looking at recycling in the Victoria's past. I like everything this artist does and I hope that more of our city's firms will commission him to decorate their buildings with our history seen through his eyes.

Public Works Through the Years

I think Victoria muralist Jeff Maltby's works are wonderful and here's another one I haven't shown you before. This one, entitled "Public Works Through the Years", graces an outside wall of the City of Victoria Public Works yard on Bridge Street. It shows city works crews engaged in various jobs throughout the history of the city from the past (on the right) to the present. If you click on the photo above you will see a much larger version of this mural, should you wish to see more detail.

Maltby Trompe l'Oeil Mural

Victoria's Chinatown continues to offer some splendid street scenes. This one, a mural by Victoria artist, Jeff Maltby, is on Fisgard Street very near the Chinese Public School and the Lee's Benevolent Society Building, both of which are pictured in earlier posts on this blog. I love the way this mural is so beautifully integrated into its environment. It's actually on two walls, at right angles to each other and I have included a wider angle shot below that shows the mural in context.This mural is not only remarkable for its visual slight-of-hand but for its historical contribution to our appreciation of Chinatown and for its many charming details, one of which is below.

Everything Mural

Expert Victorian author Ross Crockford describes this mural as "appalling" and quotes another source who suggests this may "very well be the worst mural in Canada, perhaps even in the world." Please click on it for the LARGE picture in order to enjoy many of its splendid details. I am particularly fond of the mountain lion's expression as he eyes the juicy young violinist.

As our Willits correspondent would say, now that we've discussed the elephant in the room we can move on to more important things.

Giant Seaplane

Quite aside from the artist's refreshing disregard for scale and perspective, there is something appealingly sinister about this giant seaplane mural. The black windows remind me of that cult movie classic about the crazed trailer truck that pursues a poor motorist (Dennis Weaver?)across a nightmare superhighway landscape.

Thanks to our Willits correspondent for the title of the above film, "Duel"