Artist’s murals capture the essence of space, subject and community
Calgary artist taps into community, one wall at a time
Explore Calgary, and you’ll likely cross paths with an Alex Kwong mural. He has so many artworks in the city that he doesn’t know the precise number offhand, estimating that it’s well above a hundred. It might be sunflowers in Sunnyside, a crane in Historic Canton Block Mural Alley, or portraits of Calgary artists like Marvin “The Fly” Kee on Music Mile and Simone Saunders in the Beltline. Wherever you find his work, Kwong’s goal has been to capture the essence of the space, subject and surrounding community.
A self-taught artist, Kwong began his career learning by re-creating photographs and watching videos of other artists at work, posting his drawings to social media. “People just started reaching out eventually and saying, hey, I’m opening the restaurant, you want to paint a mural in there?” he says. “And that unravelled into my current career.”
Originally, he free-handed his murals, only later learning that most muralists use projections or a grid system to help scale their concepts and manage proportions. Today he uses what’s called a “doodle grid,” which involves making random marks and symbols on the wall — this might be alarming at first to clients, as the doodle grid looks nothing like the agreed-upon design. Overlaying the mural design on a photo of the marked-up wall creates a custom map for Kwong to follow.
Those years spent doing murals “the hard way,” essentially, gave Kwong the confidence to trust his technique when engaging with his creative process. “I could go out and do the emotional side of the art,” he explains, “… and know that whatever I explore out there, I have the tools to be able to do it justice.”
The artistic process for any new mural starts with thoroughly scoping out the site. “The physical structure will dictate what composition can go in there,” he says. “But then also you want to understand what the community uses this space for.” His goal is to design a mural that will offer the community something they see themselves reflected in while also giving them the best of his artistic abilities. “When I can go into a community and … gain something from spending time there, then I can take what resonates with me and put it in the mural. And even though it’s very specific to me, I find that it actually resonates with a wider audience”
For example, when starting the 2024 mural for the Gee How Oak Tin Association in Calgary’s Chinatown, Kwong admits he was at a bit of a loss. The association wanted a mural that honoured millennia of history and shared lineage. Kwong’s usual style is realist, often portraying snapshots that evoke part of a narrative, so he wasn’t sure how to encapsulate such a vast story.
He went to a nearby park, cleared his mind and started intuitively drawing. The idea came to him: a jade stone that would give the illusion of popping off the wall. The history could be embedded in carved imagery, while still making the best use of Kwong’s realist style. “I realized this was the perfect way to marry all of the ideas because I could make it look like an artifact,” says Kwong, whose degree in art history helped give him insight into East Asian artistic traditions. The eye-catching result, Kwong feels, “opens up the floor for people to seek more information about it and offers a celebration to that association, [and] also to Chinatown as a whole.”
Alex Kwong talks about a mural he created for the Gee How Oak Tin Association in Calgary’s Chinatown. Video by Jiaqi Su (Sukie).
After all, the engagement with the community doesn’t stop at the design phase. “I really love painting in the public space,” says Kwong. “It allows for so many really rich interactions with every kind of person.”
While he jokes that sometimes public interest can be distracting (“This is technically my office … this wall is not going to paint itself!”), Kwong says that the final project stands as a receipt for all the interactions he had with the community during its creation. “Usually by the end of the project, I feel like I’ve gotten more than I’ve left behind.”
When not painting murals — which, at least in Calgary, is typically limited to the warmer months of the year — Kwong works in other media, particularly oil painting. These projects lack the requirements of client briefs or limitations of walls, which Kwong finds both freeing and daunting. “I’m really loving the freedom of exploration there … It’s a whole other abyss to step into.”
Follow Alex Kwong’s work on Instagram and his website.
About the Storytelling Project
The Storytelling Project raises awareness about Calgarians who, by living creative lives, are making Calgary a better city, effecting positive change and enriching others’ lives.
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