New Painted Outdoor Mural for Downtown Yonkers, NY by Artist Emily Stedman. "We Can Build A Nest Here" is a colorful painting on the facade of an old abandoned building at 4-8 Warburton Ave. For the past month, YOHO artist Emily Stedman has been standing outdoors on scaffolding and a 20 foot ladder, scraping, priming, drawing, painting and varnishing to create a public art mural from a small watercolor painting.
Stedman studied how to apply oil primer to rusty metal, what kinds of paint to use outdoors, how to get the image onto the large area and how to preserve the art from the outdoor elements. A "grid" method was employed to transfer the small watercolor painting onto the large metal grates.
She drew the image on to the metal grates, focusing on one square at a time, until the entire image was transferred. Once finished, Stedman simply painted over the grid lines and started working on the mural painting, which was now in proportion. The theme of the mural is new beginnings, the circle of life, and finding a home. A future, a home, even in the midst of this abandoned and forgotten site.
