Blueprint of a Mother

When describing his mural, Portrait of a Mother, artist Erik Burke states: "a woman in profile, a carnation, sagebrush, and Mount Whitney overlay one another. The woman (my wife and new mother) was used as a nurturing figure depicted in rich calming blueprint blue. She tends her flock of sheep patterned across her blouse that rises from Mount Whitney, the highest summit in the contiguous United States and the Sierra Nevada. She is flanked by Nevada's state flower, the wild and ever present sagebrush. An enlarged carnation obscures her head but is aligned in a way to represent the entangled and beautiful workings of the brain. Although the carnation has no direct tie to the area, I chose it because it has long been cultivated by many and varying civilizations for decoration and ceremonial purposes, similar to the contemporary use of murals" (eriktburke.com/Blueprint-of-a-Mother). Burke utilized a simple color palette consisting of: a variety of blue shades for the woman, her shirt, and the mountains (which were also painted using gray, white, and black); pinks and reds for the carnation; dark green for the stem of the carnation and a blueish green for the sagebrush, which extends past the parameters of the main mural and casts a gray shadow. Burke's moniker (OU36) is painted in dark blue at the very top, in the middle of the mural, and his website address (eriktburke.com) is painted in white on the bottom-left corner. The mural, 35 x 80 ft., was painted on the seven-story parking garage of Whitney Peak Hotel, during the Inaugural Sculpture Fest in 2015 in Downtown Reno.