PGAV is a global professional firm specializing in planning, architecture, design, and destination consulting. Renovating their own lobby, PGAV commissioned two murals to illuminate the firm’s mission statement. Wanting artwork that could express what a montage of beautiful destination photos could not, I was asked to develop a series of drawing proposals. With two opposing walls surrounding elevator doors, the spaces were broken into four “panels” each side, with contrasting site destination themes common to the firm’s projects: Aqua and Terra.
Starting with lobby elevation schematics, I began with linear frameworks based again on the Classical proportions of the Golden Section, knowing this armature would be familiar to the firms architects and designers. Intentionally, this structure would show through in the final paintings to reveal “process” and suggest the foundations of all their design planning. And, to emphasize the contrasting themes, I overlaid fluid swirls for Aqua, and angular, earthly tangents for Terra. On top of this framework I drew animals, plants, and buildings analogous to the experiences and feelings one would have at the many destinations, book ending the murals with human faces and hands expressing what the visitors find at the destinations; joy and tranquility. Finally, I thought we should add lines of text seen at first read, as simple pattern, but would further express specific poetic sentiments.
