I Was Accepted Into the Cortez Streetscapes Art Park Mural Contest
Wonderful News!
I have wonderful news to share:
Kit Swan Artworks was accepted as a competitor in the Cortez Streetscapes Art Park Mural Contest.
A little while ago, I shared that I had entered the contest. At the time, that was all I could really say. I had submitted the work, sent it forward, and then did what artists often have to do after pressing submit.
I waited.
Now I can officially say that my mural design was accepted, and I have been assigned a panel at the Cortez Art Park: #6.
This is a meaningful moment for me.
Not only because it is a public art opportunity, but because this project represents something much larger in my own creative life. It is one thing to create artwork privately in the studio. It is another thing to step into a public space and say, “Yes, this work can live here. Yes, this belongs in the community. Yes, I am ready to paint bigger.”
The artwork I submitted comes from the world of Kit Swan Artworks and Desert Viben’. It carries the same visual language I have been building across my illustrated collections: desert symbolism, whimsical creatures, folk-art energy, storytelling, and a sense of wonder rooted in place.
At the center of the design is the Spirit Walker, a figure that feels both ancient and imaginative. Around him lives a desert world filled with movement, mystery, and magical realism. The piece is not meant to be a literal field guide to the desert. It is more like a dream of the desert — a visual story about culture, community, memory, land, and imagination.
For the mural, the design will be adapted to a tall public panel measuring approximately 7.5 feet by 3.5 feet. That means the artwork now has to move from drawing and planning into the physical world of sanding, priming, measuring, transferring, painting, weather, and time.
That is both exciting and humbling.
Large artwork asks more from an artist. It requires planning, patience, surface preparation, materials, problem-solving, and a willingness to work with the reality of the space. It is not just about the image. It is about the board, the weather, the tools, the measurements, the sun, and the many small decisions that allow a mural to come together.
I am especially grateful that this opportunity is happening here in Cortez, Colorado.
Cortez has become part of my creative landscape. The Four Corners region, the desert light, the history, the colors, the wildlife, the mesas, and the feeling of this place continue to shape my work. To be able to contribute a public artwork here, even in this one panel, feels like a beautiful step for Kit Swan Artworks.
I also know this project will ask me to respect my own limits. I will be working in morning hours when possible, pacing myself, and taking the process one stage at a time. That may become part of the story too. Art is not always created under perfect circumstances. Sometimes it is created with planning, grit, gratitude, and a body that has to be carefully listened to.
But I am in.
The design was accepted.
The mural journey has begun.
And soon, I will be taking the Spirit Walker from paper to panel.
I will be sharing the process here in The Swan Journal as the project unfolds — from prep work and layout to transfer, painting, problem-solving, and eventually the finished mural.
Thank you for following along as Kit Swan Artworks grows from studio dream into something more visible, more public, and more real.
Thank you,
~Kit S.
Kit Swan Artworks: Create something beautiful today.