It’s been a busy summer for mural artist Sean Kelley.
Because he has a full-time job as a rad tech at the former atomic plant in Piketon, he has worked on weekends around Ironton this summer on several murals including the World War I ace Col. William Lambert mural and the ironmaster Nannie Kelly Wright medallion on the floodwall, the side wall of Lulu’s Smoke Shop, a mural at a private home, restoring the Ironton Flood mural and added a cat to the murals he did at Granny’s Novelties.
Kelley has already done two murals on the Ironton Floodwall, one was repainting the Ironton Tanks mural and the first was an original work of a stylized moth with lotus flowers around it. He is a 2004 Ironton High School and has received a bachelor degree in painting from Ohio University.
On the Lambert mural, he loved adding the field of poppies, which is a remembrance of all those that died in World War I and added color to the mural of Lambert’s plane shooting down a German aircraft.
“I wanted to have a juxtaposition of the brightness and colors of the flowers and the airplanes,” Kelley said, adding to wanted to do something more to the original work since a simple restoration “is not my cup of tea. I like the poppies. A lot of people like the poppies, it adds flow to it.”
He said he wanted the mural to look like a “1950s post card.”
He added that it has been tricky to balance a job and the time it takes to do a mural.
“It’s a lot of time,” he said.
He said he prefers to create a mural as opposed to a straight restoration.
“I like the freedom,” Kelley said. “I love what I am doing for the town, it is awesome. The money is good, but I do these murals for joy.”
Many of the murals haven’t been touched since they were first painted in the early to mid-1990s.
He uses a combination of glossy and matte house paint and spray paint to bring the murals back to life.
“You can’t do small details with spray paint so I combine it with house paint to make it look good,” Kelley said.
Once he is finished, he puts on a sealer so the paint is protected from the elements and keeps its details for years to come.
Kelley said he has gotten positive responses from his mural work.
“The most popular has been at Granny’s,” he said. “A lot of people have been taking selfies with it.”
Kelley said he expects to finish up with the Wright mural and Flood of Ironton murals by the end of November.