A couple of dads in a Philadelphia suburb had artist Matthew Austin do some murals in their 17th-19th century house. For the kid's room, he did a bunch of classic kid stories--plus robots [they're everywhere!!], all kid-style: "To get the truest kidlike results, Austin ended up drawing a lot of the animal figures with his left hand and his feet," Cookie Magazine reported back in like February [oops]. His feet? Way up on the wall? That sounds like crazytalk to me.
To the Manor Born story and slideshow [cookiemag]
Anyone know the real Matthew Austin and if he has a website?
update: yes, Cookie knows. They know everything. Matthew Austin Is. The Itinerant Muralist. [itinerantmuralist.com, thanks JD]
I wonder why they didn't just have their kids draw the murals for them...?
[I think the kid wasn't born yet. -ed.]
OK, then, so why didn't the dads draw the murals themselves? Or is there something extraordinarily artistic about Matthew Austin's work that separates it from other adults' "kidlike" drawings? (Sigh. I suspect my artistic ignorance is showing again.)
[well, being the Itinerant Muralist, as we just found out, he was already living onsite, muraling up the rest of the house. If you have a live-in muralist, then, why WOULD you do it yourself? -ed.]
Give me a bottle of Makers and some markers - I'll show you the on-site Itinerant Muralist.
[muralize and run! -ed.]
If you look at the more close-up images of this room, alongside the other work that Matt has done, it might be easier to see that this is a high quality artistic interpretation of kidlike drawings. I am not an artist, so I can't really say 'what' it is, but to start, a kid would be unlikely to have the capacity to create something cohesive at the scale of a room.