A Coventry artist has flown back from the US to secretly repair a mural he painted, after it was vandalised.<\/p>\n
The artwork depicting two orangutans at Hearsall Common, Earlsdon, was designed by Michael Batchelor in 2021 for a local boy Dylan, who had a rare genetic disorder and died in 2023, aged four.<\/p>\n
The painting was vandalised in November, however, after Mr Batchelor spotted a post online from Dylan’s family, he flew back to fix it.<\/p>\n
“We didn’t know he was there doing it so it was a really lovely surprise”, Dylan’s grandad, Martin Prue, said. “Everybody, not just the family, has been really pleased that it’s back because of what it represents”, he added.<\/p>\n
Mr Prue said his family were not aware the mural had been damaged until a friend who walked their dog nearby told them. <\/p>\n
“It was really upsetting, the part that represented Dylan was untouched, but the main mural was quite badly defaced,” he added.<\/p>\n
“You can have something really beautiful and it’s turned into something ugly and artless.”<\/p>\n
Mr Prue said the artist had commented on the family’s social media post to say he would repair the mural but they had not received any further contact.<\/p>\n
They later spotted his online post revealing the artwork had been restored. <\/p>\n
Mr Prue added it had been commissioned by him and his wife Louise at the back of their house, and had “put a smile on people’s faces” since it was painted during the Covid pandemic. <\/p>\n
It was “lovely” that it had been restored in time for Christmas, Mr Prue said. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Coventry artist has flown back from the US to secretly repair a mural he painted, after it…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":208381,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[307,304,305,306,308,93,61,60],"class_list":{"0":"post-208380","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-artsanddesign","11":"tag-artsdesign","12":"tag-design","13":"tag-entertainment","14":"tag-ie","15":"tag-ireland"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208380","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=208380"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208380\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/208381"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=208380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=208380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=208380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}