Muralist Hanna Daly recently lost her mom and is dedicating her next artwork in La Jolla as a special tribute to her parent featuring her mom’s favorite bird: a peacock.
The new mural, to be painted just in time for Mother’s Day on May 8, will replace an existing mural Daly did during the pandemic on the side of the Fresheria building at 627 Pearl St.
“I grew up on a farm and there were peacocks all over the place and my mom loved peacocks,” said Daly. “When I was 8 years old, my mom made me a peacock Halloween costume, and she made me a whole tail out of peacock feathers.”
Daly plans to paint her Mother’s Day tribute mural May 4-6.
“I will be repainting that wall with a piece that tells moms how much we need them, love them and miss them,” she said. “I’m not 100% sure what I will paint yet, but my mother loved peacocks, and at the age of 70, she got a Cala Lilly tattoo on her ankle. So I’ll probably incorporate those images in addition to the text, ‘I love you, Mom.’”
Daly started her business painting murals in 2005. “It started out super small, I just did kid’s rooms,” she said adding, “It’s ramped up a lot in the last few years.”
Asked how many murals she’s done since Daly replied: “Over 1,000. I don’t count. I never keep track. I didn’t get paid for all of them. I do about 100 a year now.”
Daly’s murals explore a wide range of topics. Some, as with her upcoming Mother’s Day tribute, have serious themes. She recently did one titled “Death Takes A Holiday,” memorializing the deaths of those close to her and her wife.
Above all, Daly’s murals are colorful.
“I’m a colorful person. I love color, and doing things that inspire people to be a little bolder with their decisions,” she said adding, “I can’t make everybody happy? But if my work makes people happy when they walk by – that’s all you can do.”
It’s also remarkably clear Daly has a real passion for her work.
“It’s exciting. Every day I go to work I change the world a little bit, even if it is one teeny-tiny corner,” she said. “It’s really a rad job. I get to meet different, new people, all the time. I also love that I’m working up in Escondido one day, at a school the next day, then in somebody’s mansion the next. I love it and I love to travel. It gives me a lot of freedom.”
Pointing out she’s done murals all over, Daly noted, “I probably have 10 in Pacific Beach including one on the Nite Owl Cocktail Lounge, 2772 Garnet Ave., that you see when you get stuck in that intersection coming into PB.”
Daly couldn’t think of a “dream” mural she wanted to paint but talked instead about problematic painting. “I don’t like stuff that’s really tall. It gets really tiring being up so high,” she noted.
Daly discussed her technique.
“I do a loose idea,” she said. “I don’t measure everything out and make it perfect. I sketch them (murals) in chalk, then paint them using house paint most of the time. It lasts forever. It won’t even start fading for 10 years.”
Added Daly, “I enjoy the process of ‘not’ knowing what it’s going to look like. And it’s weird because: I don’t know. A lot of artists start out with a sketch that looks exactly like a mural. My sketch is an overall idea. But it’s not going to look like that. I just enjoy changing stuff. It’s kind of a surprise to me, too, when I’m finished.”
Daly encourages people to pick up a brush and try painting. “It’s very therapeutic, about creation, for me,” she concluded, adding she likes the fact that painting is “very tangible. I can show people a visual picture of what I did that day. Even if you just pick it (painting) up as a craft, there really isn’t a risk. I always encourage people, for whatever is artistic in them, to express that.”
