Feasts for the Eyes

By Joan Tapper

Lisa Kelly applies color to a logo for Lure Fish House (left), one of her regular mural customers. Her work at the Stout Bourbon Room (above) graces a wall at The Yard in Ventura. Beau Brown (bottom) got his start designing for Captain Fatty’s and created a mural for the company’s former Funk Zone location (below); his projects now often feature strong black outlines with pops of color.

FeastsfortheEyes

HAND-PAINTED MURALS AND SIGNS LIVEN THE RESTAURANT SCENE.

There’s an old saying that you eat with your eyes, meaning that the visual appeal of a dish has a lot to do with its success. Owners of restaurants, bars, coffee shops, and bakeries have also long known that a painted backdrop can help establish a mood or set the scene for a delightful meal. It’s no surprise then that several artists in the 805 area are building careers by creating interior murals, large-scale wall art, and inviting outdoor signage for eateries and other businesses.

Lisa Kelly (lisakellymurals.com), who grew up in Ventura and now lives on a boat in Ventura harbor, specializes in such murals—“from faux to figurative stuff,” she says. But her first job was mass-producing paintings for furniture stores. “I learned to paint— and paint fast,” she remembers. By the early 1990s she was exhibiting her own canvases at art shows when someone approached her about doing a wall portrait of him with his dog. That request turned into a year-long project painting murals in a residence in North Ranch.

“I started doing restaurants in 2001,” says Kelly, who began with Yolanda’s in Camarillo. That connection has lasted for two decades as she’s provided atmospheric murals for the restaurant’s venues in Simi Valley, Oxnard, and Ventura, as well.

For Lure Fish House in Santa Barbara, Kelly created a jellyfish wall, and she has painted in the chain’s other restaurants, too. “I’ve got the Lure >

Signs of good taste (left to right): A graphic wall for the SLO Public Market takes shape under Buddy Norton’s hand. Shelby Lowe works atop a scissor lift. Other examples of Canned Pineapple Co.’s work include mouthwatering lettering and images of a cheese shop’s wares on glass.

empire,” she jokes, adding that when the enterprise opened a place in Scottsdale, Arizona, they flew her there in a private plane. Once there, she quickly learned to arrange her workday around the 100-degree afternoon heat.

Each job has its challenges. “Painting is the easy part,” Kelly notes. She recently did some work at Stout Burgers & Beers in Ventura. The copper ceiling and faux cement wall were straightforward enough. But painting a couple of antique-looking signs outside meant getting into a boom lift and maneuvering it between guys in the garden. “It was like threading a needle with an elephant!” she says.

Arizona native Beau Brown (beaubrowndesign. com) came to Santa Barbara to attend Westmont College and never left. He got a degree in fine art and after graduation started working at Captain Fatty’s Brewery in Goleta, beginning with bartending and eventually designing labels and merchandise and painting a mural in the bar’s Funk Zone space.

Brown left the company to pursue his own art a few months before the pandemic, and his day-to-day work now includes graphic design and branding as well as large-scale projects. That includes a sign for High Seas Mead, which is opening a bar and tasting room in the Funk Zone for its new alcoholic beverage, a fermented honey wine.

“I tend to work with smaller local businesses,” Brown says, “often new ones or those wanting to rebrand.”

Tackling large wall spaces was a bit daunting at first,” he notes. “I remember looking up at a big wall in a taproom that was 35 by 15 feet; the middle was 9 or 10 feet up.” But the process has become less stressful. “Preparation is your friend,” he says.

He’s especially pleased with his mural for a small restaurant in Isla Vista, Lao Wang’s Street Food, which depicts “the view out to Coal Point,” he says. “The wall turns a corner, and there’s a girl on a bike with a longboard going out to surf. It represents the scene on the bluffs. I did it in three colors with high and low lights and outlined in black. I think it captures I.V. life.”

Buddy Norton and Shelby Lowe, the couple behind Canned Pineapple Co. (cannedpineappleco.com) sign and wall art, took up mural painting through a different route. Norton, who was raised in San Luis Obispo, had studied art all through high school and community college, but school wasn’t for him. He got a job in a conventional sign shop, then apprenticed with a hand-painter who specialized in lettering and gold leaf.

Lowe had grown up doing art in Northern California but was working in another field when she met Norton. After the two began dating, they started their business, but unsure about finding steady work while rooted in one area, they built out a van and took to the road, painting elsewhere for six months each year.

“Canned Pineapple began with lettering-heavy work,” says Norton. “Over the past two years there’s more imagery involved.”

“We’re unique in that we do gold leaf,” adds Lowe. “It’s a difficult process. If you make one mistake, you can ruin the work.”

The couple produced their first mural four years ago— the SLO Irresistible wall for the Creamery Marketplace. One of their biggest challenges since then has been painting an archway for the city of San Luis Obispo. “There was no wall surface,” Norton remembers. “We had to lean into the uniqueness of the structure.”

Last year, for the San Luis Obispo Public Market— which houses establishments like Brooks’ Burgers, California Tacos Cantina and Distillery, Jay Bird’s Nashville hot chicken, and the Night Shift Cookie Co.—they came up with a slat wall that shows different images on each side. If you walk one way, you see a vase, flowing vines, and howling coyotes. In the other direction there are gradually changing colors. “That was fun and interactive,” says Norton. “Any time we get to do original work, that’s a favorite.” 