Dowdle paints new downtown Hertford mural

For Max Dowdle, a windowless, blank brick wall is like the proverbial half-full glass of water. What you have depends on how you look at it.

Instead of an eyesore, Dowdle sees a blank canvas with all sorts of wildlife just waiting to appear.

Dowdle put his artistic skills to work last week, starting work on a mural on a gray brick wall at the corner of Church and Grubb streets that emphasizes the town of Hertford’s natural beauty.

Dowdle is a “public artist,” meaning he beautifies public spaces. He is a seventh-generation North Carolinian whose family worked in the arts: his mother was a jeweler, and his father was in film. He trained as a sculptor in Charleston, South Carolina, but began painting after college.

“It’s frankly a little more easy to sell paintings than sculptures,” he said. “People have a lot of wall space but less pedestal space in their homes.”

After studying in Italy, Dowdle says he came back to America and tried portraiture. But a commission for a large mural on the Durham City Hall changed the course of his career. And just in time.

The year was 2019, and Dowdle’s mural altered the direction of his artwork just as the COVID pandemic hit, ruining business for art studios and much of the art world in general. However, work for solitary outdoor artists continued, and Dowdle’s business prospered.

“I was fortunate in that way and thankful for that,” he said. “The stars aligned for me at that moment. Then things just snowballed.”

He said he found working in public spaces attractive.

“I hadn’t really considered going into public art at all, but this mural experience in Durham transformed my career,” he said. “In many ways, it gave me a lot of excellent direction. I really enjoyed working in the city and working with people who want to beautify their community and their environment and be creative, making their community a place that’s happening.”

Hertford’s new mural is funded by a grant the town received late last year from ElectriCities, the nonprofit membership organization of municipally owned electric utilities like Hertford, Edenton and Elizabeth City. The $10,000 grant, which Hertford plans to use rebranding itself as an arts-focused community, will be spent commissioning a sculpture as well as Dowdle’s mural in the town’s downtown area, town officials said.

Because the mural was paid for by a public grant, the scope and direction of the project were determined by a committee of community leaders. Dowdle said he’s learned to cultivate the skill of working within that framework. He said the town wanted to convey certain messages through the mural. To ensure he could do that, Dowdle had to learn about Hertford.

“I’m taking in the town and loving what I see. It’s beautiful. It’s clearly a town coming out of a harder time and into a better one,” he said. “It has so much potential, and I see that happening in the downtown area, with all the renovations and all the plans” underway.

Dowdle started by painting the wall along Grubb Street gray. Then, he laid out a grid pattern that matched the design on a sheet of art paper that was approved by the town. Guide markings on each square reproduce the drawing on a massive scale. Finally, all the grids are connected, producing the finished mural.

Dowdle’s mural is designed to show Hertford’s natural beauty and resilience. The painting, with its ‘ragged’ borders, exudes a dynamic vibe that mirrors the town’s spirit. It features birds, flowers, and nature, symbolizing the town’s most important attributes: its natural surroundings, fishing, and the county’s extensive waterfront.

“The idea was never to cover the building entirely and treat it as one big square or rectangle that needed to be filled,” Dowdle said. “It has an organic edge, and they loved that idea because we wouldn’t constrain it to a smaller rectangle within a larger frame for the building. I love that.”