I create original works of art that unfold to the viewer,
revealing your story layer by layer as they move and interact with the piece
Everybody has a story. Let me paint yours.
My art is transformative and has the power to alter perceptions on so many levels. It can transform the client, the viewer, the physical space, or, if I'm really fortunate, all three.
It transcends culture, age, and gender. I strive to produce strong art that can be appreciated by all and doesn't require an elaborate explanation.
Human interaction is at the core of my work. When a painting accurately reflects the intended sentiment, and I get to witness the community interacting with my representation, it is one of the most rewarding aspects of my "job."
Educational Murals
A most rewarding challenge; inspiring students with nature. As the namesake of Aurora Charter School, the northern lights illuminate the entire mural, starting with a boreal forest, moving to a steamy jungle and finally a coral reef. It was important to subtly show people interacting with nature as I wanted ...
Nature Paintings
From humpbacks to finn whales to orcas to blue whales, creating an artwork about whales remains one of the simplest and most complex subjects I've ever painted. Whales where the first subject I ever drew as a child and continue to be my favourite artworks today. I've only seen one ...
Natural History Murals
In Tune with Nature is a very different kind of mural, serving as a theatrical structure that houses a piano available for public use. Located at the front entrance of the Chemainus Public Market, this Piano Box mural encloses around the piano at night, when the market is closed, and ...
Cultural Murals
Hope Hunter was honoured with a Giants of Edmonton Mural celebrating her work with Boyle Street Community Services, which helps support those who need a hand breaking out of the cycle of homelessness and poverty with self empowerment. Hope is a mural inspired and influenced by First Nations people in ...
Community Event Murals
This was an amazing day with volunteers from the Kingsway district of Edmonton, including softball players, police, local business reps, and passers by. The mural was designed as an giant paint by numbers so that anyone could help paint, and did they ever! Normally projects unfold over over weeks and ...
Nature Paintings
Wildlife is essential to the life, health and identity of Canadian lands. Painting and portraying Canadian animals as a Canadian artist is not only a rewarding experience, I also see it as a personal responsibility. In painting iconic land animals like moose, wolves and grizzly bears I promote their important ...
Portraits
Portraits are perhaps the most personal and subjective of all paintings, as portraying the likeness and character of a human soul is one of the most magical requests I can ever receive. Finding that person in my paint by brushes is like casting spells, for all the good my typed ...
Narrative Murals
This 12 foot high by 120 foot wide mural , 50 Years and Counting, depicts the 50th anniversary of the Mustang and a tribute to Edmonton’s last 50 years. As my client Empire Collision celebrated their 50th anniversary they wanted their story painted as community support; the triumphs, aspirations, and ...
Narrative Murals
The BC Parliamentary Dining Room needed a small wall mural for their new take out coffee shop, the Parliamentary Grab N Go, that gave a fresh imaginative take while being respectful of the institution of the BC provincial parliament. My clients wanted a bright stylized artwork that almost burned their ...
Cultural Murals
This contemporary mural interpretation of Along the River During the Qingming Festival is on public display in the heart of Edmonton's chinatown. The original artwork of the same name is a cherished masterpiece, has been called "China's Mona Lisa" and was created by Zhang Zeduan 900 years ago during the ...
Natural History Murals
Paradise Adventure Park in Parksville, BC, commissioned me to create two murals for their mini golf course. The first mural has a BC ocean wildlife theme, with orcas (or killer whales), sockeye salmon, sitka deer, an otter, seal, eagles and Canada geese. The painting is a split screen showing animals ...
Nature Paintings
We are fascinated with the ability to take to the air, and we often hold the creatures that can do so in a metaphorical higher regard, compared to their cousins on the ground. As a wildlife artist, when I paint a bird I am painting a world I can never ...
Nature Paintings
Few animals have the immediate effect of eagles with people. Again and again eagles are shared as symbolic icons in human culture and have important roles in heraldry and religions as they can represent strength, intelligence, grace, power, wisdom and more. In many First Nations cultures the eagle carries the ...
Educational Murals
Urban Harmony is the sister mural of Natural Harmony at the Aurora Charter School in Edmonton, Alberta. Teachers, parents, and myself, as the mural artist wanted to strike the imagination of students using technology, architecture, fantasy, and nature inspired by the southern hemisphere, where the sky has Aurora Australis, not ...
Performance Art
Sandy Lane Auto commissioned this contemporary mural to be painted live and celebrate the grand opening of their second store in Edmonton. The folks at Sandy Lane were open to an experimental artwork with their company name, so as a mural artist I jumped on the opportunity to push artistic ...
Nature Paintings
This collection of wildlife paintings spans a couple genres, continents where I painted, and time periods. Several of these artworks were created during my artist's residency at Sachaqa Centro De Arte in San Roque de Cumbaza, Peru, where I was encouraged by myself, my hosts, and my artist contemporaries to ...
Nature Paintings
Creating artworks about fish in the sea is like diving into a dream, using the eyes of my soul like an old video camera. There is so much I would like to share with paint in visiting that world that the quality never comes through. Nevertheless, as a Vancouver Island ...
Performance Art
I had the pleasure of painting a single day event performance mural as the welcoming entertainment for the 2019 AgeWell Expo in Las Vegas, Nevada. A performance mural is an orchestrated and timed artwork that is created for a live audience as it's own event, or part of a larger ...
Nature Paintings
The landscape painting is often the first genre most folks think of with art, and for good reason. An age old genre where artists portray the essence of nature, landscapes can show many different settings, such the ocean, jungles, mountains, rivers, beaches and forests. When I paint a landscape I ...
Nature Paintings
British Columbia is a natural, magical place for landscape painting. From scenic beaches and beautiful mountain ranges to lush rainforests, BC’s diverse landscapes are an endless muse for a landscape artist. Aside painting from the immediate beauty of BC nature, there is much to express in the color, texture and ...
Narrative Murals
I have painted a lot of stories and subjects in murals before, but I believe this was the first origin of a love story. Depicting Chemainus Road looking south in 1945, the mural is actually at the same location painted in the scene, providing the viewer with a step back ...
Narrative Murals
In this Greek streetscape mural named Koutouki, my clients wanted to project a vision of a vibrant section of Athens, called Plaka, into the 124 street area of Edmonton. The idea was to create an artistic prophecy and inspiration of what the area could become, for all of the public ...
Storyboards
Storyboards show a film or commercial as a comic book. They are a sequential graphic representation of how a video will read to viewers, unpacking each sequence shot by shot as a visual story. Storyboards illustrate the shots that will show the film, and give a window into what the ...
Concept Art
Conceptual art provides a visual actualization for a client's ideas. Whether creating architecture, advertisements, fantasy characters, or film sets, it's far easier and cheaper to see sketches of your ideas before investing in bringing them to life, and far easier to change a sketch than a building. Concept art will ...
Narrative Murals
These ladies painted in an Art Nouveau style made for a different and unique wall mural. The Chemainus Public Market needed to bring visitors around to the south side of the market, as customers weren't visiting the shops in that area. Market mastermind Patricia Berry wanted to somehow use art ...
Natural History Murals
"Chilliwack's Freshwater Wealth" is showcased in this mural on the new Wolfe Road pump-house! The mural depicts all 5 species of Pacific salmon in the Chilliwack River, the Hope Slough with a blue heron, muskrat and river otter, Cultus Lake and an aerial scene of the Fraser River with the ...
Cultural Murals
When I was hired as the mural artist for a giant artwork there was a lot to learn. I had a great cultural learning experience painting this mural on 97th street in the heart of Edmonton's Chinatown. It's titled Ariose after the harmony that the property owners were seeking to ...
Nature Paintings
Sunrise and sunset present some of the most beautiful times to view any location, let alone the Canadian wild. When darkness comes and departs, flipping the coin of life to the sun rising or setting, natural magic can happen. There is often a shift change in local life, as those ...
Narrative Murals
The Battle of Vimy Ridge has been called a defining moment for Canada, when the Canadian military demonstrated true independence from Britain and earned an effective and formidable reputation. After weeks of planning and training to capture the difficult German held position, in the early morning of April 9, 1917, ...
Portraits
This mural was part of the Giants of Edmonton; a partnership between Capital City Clean Up, Ched Radio, and the public where radio listeners recommend and vote for outstanding Edmonton people, places, or things as subjects for the murals. The Famous 5: Henrietta Muir Edwards, Louise McKinney, Emily Murphy, Nellie ...
Natural History Murals
This wall mural for the Strathcona County Museum and Archives was painted in my studio in Victoria, BC, before being installed on site in Sherwood Park, AB. The mural utilizes the three subjects of the Museum's logo; Sherwood Park (and Strathcona County), the Aspen Parklands, and the Beaver Hills Biosphere. ...
Cultural Murals
Surreal and playful, this mural shows a window looking into Sherwood Park, AB starting in the 1950's. From the outlined window we look into is a literal and metaphorical window into the past and inside the Strathcona County Museum and Archives.
Narrative Murals
This mural for the Whitecourt, AB Legion summarizes Canada in World War II and shows two important battles: our loss at Dieppe, and victory at Juno. As both of these operations occurred on French beaches and were important historical events in the war, I decided to blend them together into ...
Cultural Murals
As a Canadian mural artist one of the challenges I most enjoy is the unpredictability of subjects clients might ask for. This mural project in Edmonton's Chinatown was a beautiful example of the diversity my clients lead me towards, in this case learning about Chinese culture in Edmonton and having ...
Narrative Murals
What if a building became an artwork of placemaking, one that brightly consecrates the variety and history of a community? That was the question I heard when the Oliver Community League hired me to paint a mural on a small building housing public washrooms and a community room located in ...
Narrative Murals
The second mural commission for Paradise Adventure Park in Parksville, BC, is an island pirate scene. While Vancouver Island may be short on pirates, this mural depicts a tropical Caribbean island completely occupied by the jolly scoundrels. A pirate Man 0' War anchors in a bay behind an active volcano ...
Narrative Murals
This mural is about the beginnings of the town of Beverly in Edmonton; their growing, their evolution, and celebrating their 100th anniversary. The neighbourhood's history becomes alive in a giant snapshot of the past, showing what it would be like to be there back then. A bright palate was used ...
Custom Paintings
ATB Financial commissioned me for two large paintings showcasing industry in Alberta; one showcasing the industrial history of Alberta, and the other a modern portrait of Calgary with contemporary energy industries. To summarize Alberta industry in a painting, I decided to show a variety of tradespeople at work in different ...
Natural History Murals
Our Natural Home was a mural project created with the Giants of Edmonton Mural Program that depicts the North Saskatchewan River running through Edmonton. The Giants program was a partnership with Capital City Clean Up and 630 CHED Radio where the public voted on which local heroes and examples would ...
Educational Murals
Daycares have unique needs for murals and artworks. I have worked with several child care providers to create interactive paintings that act as stations, letting children know where to go or assemble. These assembly area paintings are often of animals, and can be in a variety of locations: I have ...
Nature Paintings
As an artist who's favourite subject is nature and who is often called to paint figures and portraits, I find it natural to combine people with animals in an artwork. This juxtaposition of humanity and wildlife is often based on a common thread between the two species, a subject that ...
Concept Art
Comprehensive layouts, or comps, are sketches that visualize ideas proposed by advertising designers to show clients what an advertisement will look like, before final decisions are made. These quickly generated sketches allow for art directors to accurately showcase what an advertisement will look, before the commitment of a final production. ...
Educational Murals
I enjoyed creating this mural for Tempo School, a private academic school in Edmonton that excels in the intellectual development of students. Where some of the school murals I have painted serve as educational aids, the purpose of this artwork is to celebrate and inspire the students and staff in ...
Nature Paintings
We are instinctively drawn to life in the sea, and part of my job as an artist is to help us become even more curious and attracted to it. Where I love helping people get into the ocean to see first hand the abundance of life in the sea, painting ...
Narrative Murals
This mural was painted to represent Canada's first official military involvement, the Boer War, specifically the theatres of Leliefontein and Wolve Spruit.The foreground of this military mural depicts Sergeant A.H.L. Richardson, of Strathcona's Horse, rescuing a wounded and stranded soldier, on a wounded horse, no less. The middle ground of ...
Portraits
This sports broadcasting mural is about legendary Edmonton sportscasters Rod Phillips, Brian Hall, John Short, Ernie Afaganis and Al McCann proved to be a boyishly fun project that I will never forget. It all started when I won a bid for the “Sportscasters” mural with the Giants of Edmonton ; ...
Educational Murals
This mural began as an open call for artists to visually summarize the 7 habits in an educational context, and me having no idea what to do. After visiting the school and seeing the number of walls to be included I realized that the mural needed to have a consistent ...
Narrative Murals
Violet Wild Cannabis Co envisioned this mural as an unique alternate take on the town of Chemainus, BC. Painted in a comic book style with black outlines, this mural depicts an imaginary fish eye view of Willow street in downtown Chemainus. Vivid colour from a puff of smoke brightens the ...
Narrative Murals
Team Martin was a mural project painted for the Giants of Edmonton, a collaboration with the City of Edmonton, Ched Radio, property owners and the public, where inspirational Edmonton residents are commemorated in a mural. When this mural was painted, Kevin Martin's team had recently won the gold medal in ...
Narrative Murals
This whimsical little ocean themed painting for the Osborne Bay Pub was the first mural in Crofton, BC. The mural is composed of a wave washing over an underwater ocean scene where a giant Pacific octopus is playing a red piano, as musical notes curve out of piano into the ...
Natural History Murals
This mural was a partnership between myself, Jane Molstad of the McCauley Revitalization Strategy, and representatives from Lucki's Exercise Equipment, a local business with mural desires. The designated mural wall had been constantly hit with graffiti over the years, to the point where it was one of the most problematic ...
Narrative Murals
The story of Beverly Heights’ sports history is told on two murals that flank the entry of the sports program building, celebrating the community champions that developed and supported the programs from their inception to the present. These local sports stories and photos were researched to provide these murals with ...
Cultural Murals
This series of murals promoting Alberta Avenue in Edmonton uses a diptych and triptych mural to showcase the grassroots festivals created by the arts community on 118 (Alberta) Ave. These artworks live on the exterior walls of the Alberta Avenue Community League, which is within eyesight of the festivals and ...
I am available for freelance. Can't wait for the next exciting project! Could be yours?
Kris Friesen
