The City of Williams Lake has styled itself the
Mural Capital of the Cariboo and not without good reason. It was the local chapter of
Communities in Bloom which provided the initial impetus for a downtown mural project. The project was embraced by city council and got underway in (as best we can tell) 2002 with the first mural,
When Duty Calls, being placed on the fire hall in 2002. The artist was Dwayne Davis of
Davis Arts. Davis has been the artist for the majority of the downtown murals, including
The Branding, which was painted on the south wall of the
City Vacuum building in 2007.
This mural was dedicated in recognition of Doug and Floris Martineau.
This particular mural brings back memories for me, as I participated in "The Branding" for many years in another life on the prairies of Alberta. For a young kid, branding day was great fun, allowing us to wrestle steers and heifers which were, on occasion, a bit too much for a kid to handle. In my early adulthood I helped some friends who branded the "old fashioned" way, exactly as shown in the mural. Usually, that was me, the "Hinder", the one in the white cowboy hat, white shirt and blue jeans, sitting on the ground at the hind end of the steer.
The Branding
102 3rd Ave. N., Williams Lake, BC V2G 2A4 Canada
Artist: Dwayne Davis, 2007
Funded by: Communities in Bloom, City Vacuum, Paint Depot, City of Williams Lake in recognition of Doug and Floris Martineau
About:
Communities in Bloom asked Dwayne to paint a ranch scene, and he wanted to depict an old-fashioned branding. Dwayne painted from photos he’d taken years ago at a Dorsey Ranch branding. The scene reminds him of Texas Fosbery’s Ranch, by Lee’s Corner out west, a place Dwayne spent a lot of time as a child. Dwayne says if it weren’t for his first horse Knothead, an $85 gift from his father, he would have been a cowboy.
Fortunately for us, Knothead lived up to his name and Dwayne got so frustrated with the horse that he chose a career in the arts instead. Dwayne says these days only the small ranches brand like this and that, for the most part, the whole branding culture is gone. The modern ranches tag their cattle on the ear. This ranch scene is inspired by the Dorsey Ranch by Anahim Lake in Tsilhqot’in territory “out west” along highway 20. An old fashioned “branding” is taking place, where cowboys heat the branding irons in the fire and seer the cattle in the spring. The boy sitting on the back of the truck is Dwayne as a child, enjoying the company of a ranch hand he remembers that always found time to play guitar and tell stories when there was fencing work to be done.
Artistic Notes:
The texture and shape of the wall dictated the mural design. On the left where the wall is high subjects are close to life-sized. On the right, where the wall is shorter, subjects are receding into the distance. Dwayne and Steven spent a lot of time painting the ranch’s ground, working to achieve the illusion of it falling back. The wall had been freshly stuccoed which made painting in textures quite challenging. Dwayne’s son Steven helped by painting the trees and the ground.
From Downtown Williams Lake