Viet Nam War Museum Murals (1989)

Last year in August I posted a few photos of a series of murals done for the Viet Nam War Museum in San Antonio, Texas which Alex Rubio and I designed and painted back in 1989. I recently found a bunch of photos showing the murals at different stages of completion.

This mural was challenging on various levels. I had never painted so many portraits and buildings in one shot like I did for this set of murals. The lighting was poor as well. Painting corrugated sheet metal wasn't easy either. Tedious Maximus !!

All the work was generally drawn with a lot of detail before we actually painted it.

This is a market scene that is about halfway finished. I forgot to mention that we were painting with oil paints in a poorly ventilated space. I had a purple haze all in my brain.

That's me wearing some pretty weak protection against the fumes.

That's a scooter/cart that Alex was painting. As was the case at the time, I painted all the human figures since Alex wasn't comfortable with doing that at the time. Note the scale model box of the same kind of vehicle used for reference. Neato!

Alex wearing hand prophylactics. Hee, hee.


There were three separate murals in the museum. Two were on the second floor and one along the stairwell leading up to the museum.

I painted the portraits and Alex painted the landscape and helicopters for these stairwell murals (above and below).









The main mural of a Vietnamese market almost completed.



Despite the look on my face I think I was happy that our work was almost done or perhaps I was overcome by the fumes...dunno.

Below is a link to the original post.

Arts in the Family: Viet Nam War Museum Murals