If you’ve read the story of the Tofino Forest Landscape mural, you already know this family. A couple who moved from Tofino, BC to Toronto, carrying their West Coast memories with them — and wanting to pass that world on to their children through art.
This is the other room.
Two kids’ bedrooms, side by side, sharing the same wall, the same briefing, and the same muse: the breathtaking beauty of Tofino, BC. But two different children. Two different worlds.
While the first room captures the forest landscape in daylight — rolling hills, pine trees, and that soft Pacific Northwest light — this room belongs to the night. A hand-painted ocean mural that transforms the entire wall into a Tofino midnight scene: a deep navy starry sky above layered mountain silhouettes, a sandy shoreline, and below the waterline, a humpback whale swimming calmly through the still Pacific waters.
And here’s the magic: seeing the stars and the whale at the same time is something that’s impossible in real life. You can stand on a Tofino beach under a full moon and watch the ocean — but you cannot see what swims beneath it. With paint and creativity and a little bit of wonder, art makes it possible. Both worlds, above and below, held together in one breathtaking scene.
For the parents, it’s another window back to their hometown — the Pacific they know and love, now glowing softly on their children’s bedroom wall in Toronto. For their kids, growing up on the other side of the country, it’s the beginning of an imagination. The stories their parents tell them about Tofino will have a place to live. The whale, the stars, the mountains — they’ll grow up knowing them.
With every mural I paint, I become more convinced of the importance of what I call sentimental interior design: spaces that connect deeply with the people who inhabit them, rather than the other way around. Objects and art that, despite being new, are rooted in our history — in what matters to us, in who we are — rather than in some fleeting trend.
This is what a mural can do that nothing else can.
See also: the companion Tofino Forest Landscape mural painted for the same family.