Painting across Lakeland

Well, blank walls across downtown Lakeland are turned into colorful masterpieces. There's a new mural festival to color wave walls, bringing nearly a dozen artists from all across the country and around the world to transform the Swan City into an open-air art gallery. It's pretty special, and FOX 13's Carla Byron takes us behind the brushstrokes. A young girl contemplating her future and divine purpose. There's nothing written in the journal, so it's her future being written. This is part of the story behind artist Keith Goodson's mural on West Main Street downtown. He's from Auburndale and was chosen as the only artist representing Polk County in a brand new mural festival called Color Wave Walls. Founded by local artists Jillian Fazio and Katerina Santos. It's kind of that, if you can see it, you can be it. We hope that young, talented artists in our community can see these incredible artists painting at their walls and feel like, I could do that one day, you know, and that would be an honor. They narrowed down more than 430 submissions from 21 countries to bring 11 nationally and internationally recognized muralists right here to Lakeland. Representing places like France, Australia, Spain, and Canada. Mural artist Nina Falkhoff traveled all the way from the Netherlands. And she says participating is like a dream come true. She hopes people passing by will look at the subject in her mural differently. Maybe the spoonbill is like, oh, whatever, this bird that's at the lake. And now they see it like, whoa, it's such a main character. And they feel a bit different. So hopefully by bringing it into their world, they embrace it a bit more. And hopefully there are More appreciative and they treat nature better. In this particular scene here, you have a young man that is going to be stepping out of the mural into his future and his goal. Goodson says his goal is to be an inspiration for the younger generation of artists. SCU sponsored me, Southeastern University, so I'm trying to do my due diligence as an artist to inspire the young people to... To follow the dreams and their goals. The muralists will be painting through November 18th in Lakeland. Carla Byron Fox 13 news.