Harry Engstrom plans to spend parts of four days on project
Originally painted by Arlington resident Harry Engstrom and his son Eric, the elder Engstrom plans to spend parts of four days adding new color to the sky and other parts of the 132-foot mural affected by weather. He started his touch-up work on Monday, Oct. 12.
The original project took six weeks to complete, Engstrom said.
“I gave (the building’s owner Ron Hansen and his partner) a proposal,” Engstrom recalled the process that led to the mural’s construction in 2021. “Then I tweaked the proposal. They accepted the proposal and we went from there.”
Engstrom estimates that he has painted 200 murals in various parts of the continent. The first was in 1972, when he was about 18.
As a matter of cinematic folklore, Alfred Hitchcock made guest appearances in many of the films he directed. Engstrom said he has painted himself into “a couple of my murals.”
“I did a river mural once,” he said. “They wanted the salmon, but they left the subject matter open. So I included a couple of my friends as fishermen and added my kids as well. I’m in it, too, holding a 15-pound steelhead.”
Engstrom’s mural replaced a rendition of Dutch folk life painted by Bill Swinburnson in 2002.