Latest Limerick mural captures moment from 1976

THE latest Draw Out creation in Limerick is in Thomondgate and it depicts a photograph taken in 1976 of children who gathered together to clean up. 

Mariana Duarte Santos is the artist behind the creation. Hailing from Lisbon Portugal, she is known for remaking memories from local stories and archives. 

“Draw Out contacted me to paint a mural in Thomondgate, after researching the area, the local archives and sending in some proposals, we decided on this picture after some input from some residents,” she said. 

When the final design was chosen, the Portuguese artist got to work on the black and white mural that takes over three sides of a building in the Limerick City location. 

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“It was tricky with the weather but we ended up being lucky, I completed the work in a bit less than a week but with a lot of full days from sunrise to sunset,” she told the Limerick Leader/ Limerick Live. 

Describing her work as “figurative in nature, centered mainly around painting, drawing, printmaking and murals” the artist also explained that her work is: “influenced by other artistic areas such as cinema and literature”.

Mariana regularly holds exhibitions in Portugal and has over 40 murals painted across her home country, Spain and Ireland (Dún Laoghaire, Dundalk, Wexford, Ennis and now Limerick). 

“When it comes to public art, the themes I work on are mostly focused around the concepts of memory, collective identity and local stories, therefore archive pictures are key in my mural work,” she added.