Lush Roof Mural

The work team at LUSH Broadmead, Bristol had an uninspiring outdoor space to have a tea break in. A bleak empty flat roof, surrounded by high brick walls of industrial city buildings, an urban desert of bricks and metal. Occasionally an insect would fly by and would keep on going.

I suggested that the space could be brought to life with a roof mural and some plants and the manager agreed. So over the dry summer of 2016, I designed and painted a mural that would be simple, in the colour pallet of the company and easy to maintain.

The design was based on the 8 planets and moon of our solar system, with Earth centralised in the middle of the roof, it contained circles within it, representing layers of our environment; the oceans, mountains and forests.

The design aimed to introduce the bigger natural elements of our environment into a small boxy cityscape, so to remember them whilst having a break from the shop floor.

I painted the roof white and did the patterns in black. The paint came from The Scrap Store, reducing waste and recycling.

As I worked on the roof, some LUSH staff also became creative and made a bug playground.

I enjoyed seeing how quickly others started to use the space, as soon as the first layer of paint was down. With the addition of plants, the space became more inviting when on a tea break.

Every day I went out onto the roof, I would be dive-bombed by the roosting seagulls. So a broom became handy for more than sweeping.

This is the largest painting I have done and enjoyed the scale.