Over the past few years, self-taught muralist Miriam Moran has been at the forefront of several inspirational projects in Cambridge, but got started when a friend asked her to decorate her home after admiring some of Moran’s sketches. (Photo courtesy Miriam Moran)
A most welcome recent trend involves gifted artists transforming bare, wasted public spaces into iconic legacy treasures. But a number of these talented decorative gurus have also created mural magic in private homes.
Mural artist Michael Rosato, who started out in architecture and design, has earned exceptional renown for his large scale renderings of historic eras, events and individuals from Tilghman Island to Easton, Cambridge to Crisfield, and far beyond.
But long before embarking on those, he was equally at home helping transform residential spaces into virtual castles, boats, sporting fields, and other magical dreamscapes.
Rosato recalled that his residential mural work began long before his now trademark public mural enterprises, including those along the Chesapeake Mural Trail, back in the early 1990s when he was still just “learning to paint.”
An early client, who he’s now worked and been friends with for 32 years, “discovered” him by accident, admiring a whimsical princess mural he’d painted to decorate wife Heather’s children’s store.
At the first of his three homes on his Dorchester County property, the client requested that Rosato make the beam-ceilinged room resemble a work boat hull.
In another, a farmhouse expanded from 4,000 to 14,000 square feet, Rosato was literally given free creative rein throughout virtually “every square inch,” including the final piece, the expansive billiard room, containing “gorgeous giant wood coffers.” Though tasked with creating a ceiling mural over the billiard table area, Rosato convinced the client to also fill the remaining coffers with designs detailing the hunting landscapes he so enjoyed throughout his property populated by fox, pheasant, and deer.
After photographing the different areas, Rosato measured the coffer space, paint the design onto canvas, then glue it on “so it looks just like its been painted on the wall,” he noted.
Another client, who owns a winery in Culpeper, Va., a devotee of everything medieval, yearned to have the inside of the huge home he built to resemble a castle. Requesting that Rosato also incorporate his kids in the period decor design, the artist eagerly complied, crafting images of his sons encased in armor engaged in a swordfight, with his daughter depicted as a princess in waiting. Elsewhere in the home, Rosato also inserted fanciful portraits of his wife, and the client himself, reaching out to catch a falcon.
Self taught muralist Miriam Moran helped design and create Cora’s Corner at Dorchester County Public Library, honoring the memory of a senior staff member’s young daughter.
Over the past few years, she’s been at the forefront of several other inspirational projects in Cambridge, from transforming a main downtown thoroughfare into a powerful street canvas of hope, to artistically recreating the unlikely journey of a now successful city native in a challenged neighborhood.
At the Packing House, the refurbished remnant of former powerhouse Phillips Packing Company, Moran painted a vivid logo mural for the site’s innovative community workspace, MERGE.
She’s been working with Project Blackboard to renovate community basketball courts with large scale murals.
But long before, a friend, admiring some of her sketches, asked if she’d decorate her home’s interior, and Moran dove right in.
Drawn naturally to home decor by her parents, avid HGTV followers who were continually updating their home, Moran decided to try her hand at making a tiny bathroom appear larger. In the process, her artistic passion ignited, producing a glorious painted ode to her family’s native Puerto Rico.
In another residence, she paid tribute to another family’s fallen son, her painted portrait of him brightening not only a dark wall but a desolate time.
The Billet-Collins decorative arts studio, woman owned and family-operated, features sisters Amy and Kellie, with mom Barbara, who began her career helping renovate DC’s Union Station.
Through the magic of murals, they’ve helped make the Children’s Unit of D.C.’s Georgetown Hospital brighter, reimagining doorways with whimsical kid-friendly designs, including a firehouse featuring a friendly dalmatian.
But they also delight in working with decorators and clients one-on-one, creating an array of home interior murals, literally from floor to ceiling, and everywhere in between.
One homeowner, wanting to infuse her beloved Eastern Shore of Maryland and it’s rich birding heritage, the team incorporated seagulls, herons and pheasant, plus her children and dogs frolicking in the fields near an old stone building’s ruins.
Another residential scenario needing to be creatively solved involved a young couple and their historic stone house, which had been relocated miles across the country, stone by stone.
To meet the challenge of dedicating one rich, wood paneled area within as a Whiskey Room, the Billet-Collins coterie focused on what they called “the fifth wall,” aka, the blank white ceiling.
Drawing on the home’s historic roots, they delved into researching then recreating a cartography-inspired authentic looking period world map, perfectly complementing the sanctuary for sipping and savoring.
Dee Lenehan of Baltimore-based Lenehan Studios traces her creative roots back to her artist grandmother and seamstress mother. Hoping to make a living via the artistic process she loved, Lenehan augmented her B.S. in Art Education from Towson State with further professional study at Pratt Institute, McDaniel College, and with artisan mentors in Italy and France.
But while pursuing a pragmatic career as a school art teacher, a friend requested that she paint a mural for their child’s bedroom. The experience of getting paid to create in someone’s home space became a life-changing revelation, and she opened her studio in 2001.
Now regularly sought out by other individuals and noted designers to add uniquely chic touches to homes from Kent Island, to Berlin, to Ocean City, as well as Washington, D.C., and around the United States.
For one couple with a blended family, Lenehan enjoyed creating urban landscape murals in each child’s bedroom–Paris for the daughter, New York for the son.
She’s also created immersive mural wall artscapes for a safari themed bedroom, a fanciful fairy wonderland, and an underwater-themed nursery.
Among Lenehan’s latest lauded ventures is the hand-painted mural she created to grace the breakfast room of the 2023 Southern Living Magazine Annual Idea House in Nashville, Tenn.
