Hello, my name is Leoma Lovegrove and I'm a commercial artist from Sarasota, Florida. And you may wonder
how I got started with all of this. And I started out with a phone call from Idris Baker, who is in
charge of the beautification project sponsored by the PTO of Unionville, Indiana. And when she called,
she asked if I'd like to do one mural on a school hall
And so I told her I would call her back, and 15 minutes later, I made up my mind. And two weeks, after
two weeks, I was in Unionville. So we came, as soon as I got to her house, she drove me to the school
so I could take a look at the wall and get an idea of what I had to draw. So when we got into the hallway
downstairs, we're now upstairs, I said, well, Idris, what wall is it?
She kind of looked at me. She has a real cute grin. And she said, it's the hall. And all the blood kind
of rushed to my head. And it was a little bit scary because it just bare walls, not knowing what was
going to go on them was a little frightening to me. So I went back. She took me back to her house. And
I just wanted to get it off my mind. So two hours later, I came back and just
closest wall to me and I sketched a panda. And I just kept sketching and sketching until it was all
sketched. And then after it was, and then after everything was sketched in, it was like a thousand pounds
was lifted off my shoulders. And then I started the painting procedure. It was until I did start adding
the color. And after being here a week all by myself, I asked her for help.
and the volunteers kept showing up and coming in with their paint brushes and doing anything they could
to help, even if it was making a cup of coffee or just giving them moral support. I think everybody
in Unionville took part in this creation. This is a cartoon of me that I sketched in towards the end
of the five weeks. It took two weeks to complete the downstairs murals, which, and, uh,
All together, there are 39 murals. There are more animals than that, but 39 individual murals.
So at the end, I decided that I got one walk to call my own. And so I didn't have it approved by anybody.
I just started sketching. And I do a cartoon of me. This represents my helpers with their paintbrush
and their paint. And towards the end, the mental frustration
working 15 hours a day and on my feet. I just broke down after I put helpers. I couldn't have made it
without you. And I really have grown to love the people here in Unionville. Without them, I honestly
couldn't have made it. So I look happy. I was happy the whole time, but at times I kind of
had a compassion for Michelangelo. I don't know the dripping of wax on your face, but I do know kind
of pretty much the mental strain and the physical pain he did go through. So when he did the Sistine
Chapel, this is my Sistine Chapel, even though I wasn't on landers. This wall happens to be one of my
favorites. These four
people who I grew to know and love here at Unionville School and they gave me moral support,
a cup of coffee, they painted for me, they everything. They brought my lunch and they just really worked
around the clock right with me. And I won't mention any names but Terry and these all reflect their
personalities and she's always got her mouth going 24 miles an hour.
And this is a teacher who she always has that stunned face. She's always into everything, but she's
always, you know, surprised at what's going on. And this is a real dear friend of mine. And she wears
her hair up in a knot. So I put the knot up there. And she's always got something burning in the fire.
And I have her getting ready to jump out of the nest. She's ready to get everything. And this is another
secretary. She's one of the,
Those dear people who, when she talks, she expresses herself with her hands. She doesn't even need any
words. Her feet and hands are going constantly. And these are my pals. Notice the border that surrounds
the murals on the upstairs, murals. I decided to put in,
a border around everything so it would make everything tie in. And so it just wouldn't be a picture
here and a picture there. I wanted it to all work as one composition. And downstairs I used bamboo,
which really turned out nice. And I wanted to use something different up here since it was the Northern
Hemisphere animals. And so I just thought of my favorite vine, which happened to be a morning glory.
Morning glory vine going all the way around. And it surrounds every picture.
Should I go this way? Boy, it seems like just a short distance to walk. These halls got a little bit
longer every day. Down at the end of the hall is a jaguar. And in a way, he was the most simplest animal
to draw and paint. Everything just, he's one of those paintings, everything just came out smooth. The
drawing was right, the paint went on right.
And he didn't quite take his long. And I wanted to get a really nice effect with him since he's at the
end of the hall. And I wanted to use something with strength. Like to me, he represents strength. And
he was in the first animals on the second floor that I completed. And I figured if I just had something
to look back at, you know, I was down at the end of the hall painting, to give me a little energy or
give me some strength, this would be the thing to look at.
So I put the jaguar there and everybody loves them. They used to call him a cougar because before his
spots were in, he looked exactly like a cougar or a mountain lion without the spots. I've learned so
much about the anatomy of animals. I completed a wildlife endangered species series before I came up
here to do the murals. And so my knowledge of the anatomy on the animals was
That was fairly good, but I can't believe how much more I've learned just being up here and doing these.
This is a picture of the snake, which was requested by all the boys here at the school.
They always would come up to me, where's the snake? Where's the snake? And so I put it up above the
drinking fountain so they would be sure to miss it. And in the beginning, I've never really been around
children. And during the painting of the second floor, schools and sessions, so all at once I found
myself surrounded by a million kids all asking the same question at once, which was, how long have you
been painting? How long have you been painting?
Sometimes I ask them what time was it. Or I'd say, you know, like I've been painting as long as I can
remember, which I have. I remember his first drawing even before I got in the first grade. And my biggest
influence as a teacher was Richard Weil, my grade school teacher. And he always seemed to really work
with me. And I learned perspective when I was in the third grade. And I just learned so much about drawing then.
And I've always, I can't think of anything else I've wanted to do but paint. So when I graduated high
school, I went to Ringling School of Arts in Sarasota, Florida. And it was a three-year program, and
I went into the commercial art field. I might add about the school, I started out with about 250 in
my class, and they ask you back each term, and I graduated with 40 people. They only allow 40 to graduate per year.
And I've studied under, I've had private lessons from many different people and my mother also was a
big influence on me. She's an artist and she paints maybe 20 pictures a day literally and she just paints
all the time. So being around that and plus my love for it, I've always wanted to be an artist and I
guess that's what I am. This is a walrus. I was going to dedicate this to my father but
I didn't want to be too mean. But he was another one I did when I first got up here on the second floor.
And there was something I was going to say, but I can't remember right now. You had a dream? Oh,
the dream, yeah.
Every night, I would go home after work. And while I was up here, the janitors were here till midnight,
so I stayed till midnight. And when I'd get home, I would just be so worked up, I couldn't stop drawing
to myself. And I painted paintings. I just couldn't put it down. That's all I thought about it. I had
a one-track mind. And I think I was even a nuisance to people. That's all I could talk about. Hey, you
see the tiger over there? He goes, come over here. Come over here. But anyway, so I was dreaming. And
I had a dream about this walrus.
And he turned around. He came literally off the wall. I was down here painting. And he literally turned
his head off the wall and looked at me and said, a little highlight on my tail, please. And I woke up.
I go, this is it. So I got up and had a cup of coffee. And I finished him later. In fact, the last thing,
he was the last touch I practically did. I finished his eye. And I didn't give him any highlights on
his tail either.
The eagle, I feel, is one of my favorite murals here. To me, he represents power and the freedom.
even though he is our nation bird. I really like him a lot. As I put the border around all the other
murals, I didn't put them around him because I just really wanted him to stand out and I wanted to keep
the wall simple, fairly simple, so all you saw was him and nothing would detract from him.
it was important that all the animals had nice faces. Because the kids, I didn't realize how small kids
were. And when they got up here and I saw them next to the animals, they were just so overpowering that
I realized how important the faces were, you know, important how, I realized how important it was to
have nice faces and kind faces on all the animals. But in this case, I put him more realistic.
And I don't feel that this really scares them. They know how powerful it is. This is a baby mountain
gorilla. And it is on the endangered species list. And there's only a few family groups. And when I
did my endangered species series before I came here and did the murals, this was one of the first ones I
I did, so, and it really made me learn and really get interested in the endangered species. And this
is my favorite, one of my favorites, the first floor, because he's, the fur, the fur is painted in a
lot nicer. By the time I got here, I had had a little bit more experience with the walls, the texture
of the walls. It's not like painting on paper, and you don't use a, a real brush, I do.
Here I'm starting to get the feeling of the walls and the animals are just now starting to go a little
bit smoother. And if you can see the bamboo which surrounds, surrounds the bulletin boards, the doors
and each picture. This is to make everything tie in once again and make the composition work. I like
the bamboo. Okay, over here. Okay. Here we have a,
a zebra and there's four zebras together. And if I'd have to have it, if I could do it over again, I
would just do one mainly because of the lines. Uh, it was very hard to keep a straight line on the walls
and there were so many lines in the zebras and they had to be in there to make it, make them effective.
And, uh, this one proportionally is a little off cause I was trying to get more of a perspective look
on it when you like look back.
at it. Some people like it and some people don't. I like it. This one here. This zebra here has to be
one of the most comical animals here in the school. When I first did it I didn't realize how awkward
it did look and one day a woman walked by and she came up
to it like this and measured. She says, I'm on a diet and the nerve of that thing to turn around and
wink at me, you know. And I just died. So I enlarged it just a little bit more so everybody could get
the same feeling because it seems like everybody's on diets. And so everybody comes by and measures
to see if they're really that big. And the reason I really did put him winking
is because I tried five or ten times to match the eye up over here. And so one day I was just running
down the hall and I stopped and looked at it and I just made it winking and I took off down the hall
to finish something else. But that's why he's winking. We have two more over here who, the one's drinking
out of the water and the other one's trying to get a leaf off the tree. They were a little complicated
to do but after they were finished I guess it was worth it.
One of my helpers put in the grass and she was so careful to make sure all the lines were in because
I sketched them in. And I asked her if she thought I needed grass and she said yes, there should be
grass in there. And so after I sketched them in, I handed her the paintbrush and it took her four hours
to paint them in. And she did such a good job, I didn't even outline them, I just kept them as they were.
Tigers that you see here kind of have a special meaning to me. It represents family. And in a way, I've
dedicated this to the Baker family, who is whom I stayed with during my five weeks here. They welcomed
me into their home and accepted me as part of their family. And without them, I would never have been
able to make it. Coming in at midnight and everybody put up with a lot.
And this is just, as I said, it represents family and the love and the unity. And it's something which
I shared with her while I was staying with them. And they were all really great. Over here we have a
few monkeys, chimpanzees. This was the first one I did. I did the panda murals in the beginning. And
they were the first things I sketched.
I sketched it in the monkeys. And this one is on a tree, and he's fumbling around with the leaves. And
the other one up here is kind of looking out and kind of wondering what's going on. And this is the
baby monkey, one of the teachers here. Every time she walks by it, she has to scratch his tummy. She
just loves him. And the expressions, I was really pleased the way the expressions turned out.
With most of the animals, they have almost a humanistic quality about them. And as I said before, it
is important to have faces on the animals pleasant and gentle, you know, for the kids so they won't
scare them. But I really enjoy doing this one. Now, this is the first fur I really attempted to put
on the lines. It took a long time to get the fur the way I wanted it to work. As I progressed down the hall,
And as I did five, six more murals, I realized add a little water to the paint. Don't use so much paint.
Simplify it. It doesn't have to be that great of detail. But in another sense, it does have to be a
lot of detail. Painting, you always have to stand fairly far back to look at it. And when these murals,
you know, they should, the hall should be three times as wide. And so you could really stand back and
really get a good
could have a good view of them. But since you are right on top of them, they did have to be more or
less pretty detailed. And then we have the birds. And I would have loved to just take the time to just
put like ants and bees and birds and all kinds of things all over the trees. But the time didn't permit
and also simplicity was important as far as the design.
These are my friendly giraffes which stand at the end of the hall. Since I couldn't get them life size,
I figured this would be the best place to place them since they look bigger standing back. And they
all have the eyelashes and they're all very feminine. Giraffes are one of my favorite animals. I just
really like them. It took two weeks to complete the down, the first floor of Union Mill School and three
weeks to complete the upstairs.
With all the help, there must have been at least 75 people come out and offer their time. The employers
here at the school were great. They'd come in at night and wax the floors and the secretaries were great.
Everybody just really had a big part in everything in it. And without them, these wouldn't have even
been possible. Even though I've painted 39 murals for the Unionville School, it just,
can never compare to what they've given me. In the process of doing these, I've gained patience, which
I've always worked for, worked at. I never really had it, but I think I have acquired a little bit more
patience, tolerance, a world of knowledge of art, a further knowledge of the world of art, and the animals,
the anatomy, just everything. And one thing I gained were the friendships of all the people here in
Unionville.
and a better understanding of people. And if I had to do it all over again, I'd do it the same way.
There's nothing I'd leave out or put in. And it was all, it just really meant a lot to me. Down here,
after I finished the five weeks here at Unionville School,
I want to do something for myself that I would remember, that I would remember everything. And so here
we have a composite of a cartoon of me with a bird sitting on my shoulder and all the animals looking
at me and I'm smiling and I got the paintbrush in my hand and most of these animals are in their original
poses that are on the wall.
I'm just really glad that I could be a part of their beautification project. And I'm really glad I received
that phone call from Edis Baker that day. And thank you very much.