An Artist at Heart
In a shed in the woods by the lake, a beautiful piece of art stands. Dark and bright, lively colors cover a once white wall.
Carine Rofshus, a junior, spent her free time over the summer painting a mural.
At 6 feet high and 7 feet wide, it is the biggest project she has made. Her plan started off as restoring the shed at her house, but it turned into much more.
“It was a blank wall that I could do anything with,” Rofshus said. “I was going to restore the shed so I thought, ‘why not paint something on this wall?’ So that kind of created a chain reaction of paint,” Rofshus laughed.
Rofshus’s dad, Ron Rofshus, explained how he let her do this because he believes she has a lot of talent and this was going to be a good experience for her. He thought she was just going to be repainting the shed but when he found out about the mural he was surprised. Ron thought the mural turned out fantastic.
Rofshus’s mural was based on a Northern Italian city, the Cinque Terre. She wanted to bring the vibrant colors to the cozy space in her shed, which she plans on using for a hang out area with friends and an art studio for future projects.
While painting this mural, Rofshus was going through many emotions. There were days where she would take a brush, dip it in paint and just splatter the cliffs on the mural because you can’t see that detail.There were also days where she would go in, dip her brush in a vibrant color and streak it across in different angles and she would find pure joy while painting.
“As I began painting, I realized that it didn’t matter what I was painting, it was the emotions that I came across while painting and how those were expressed,” Rofshus said.
Rofshus said the mural conveys as a happy scene, but there is much more to it. Rofshus says that when you look at it, you can tell there is emotion under there. Anger, loss, love, joy and sadness were all emotions she had throughout the process.
“It’s like reading a book, except you’re not pretending you’re the character, you are the character, it’s your story,” Rofshus said.
The floor in the shed is painted like an ocean with the reflection of the mural. In the mural there is a silhouette of a man on a building, waving. On the opposite wall of the shed there is a silhouette of a girl waving back. With the floor being an ocean, it is two people waving to each other on opposite sides of the world. It represents that distance does not matter in a friendship.
“The two people represent that no matter how far two people are away from each other, distance is not an obstacle in friendship or a finite matter, it shows that friendship bears no boundaries,” Rofshus said.
Rofshus worked hard on this mural and she is very happy with how it turned out.
“You have those little moments where you accomplish something and made something look beautiful that you didn’t know you could do,” Rofshus said. “You take your step back to see what you created, you just stand there and you smile.”