DANCING FEATHERS

Our state bird’s colorful metamorphosis between predator and prey.

Aroadrunner and a snake are in a fight to the death. The bird has the snake in its beak, but the snake is wrapped around the roadrunner’s neck. Who wins?

“That’s up for interpretation,” says artist Kyle Gossman about the images in the mural he painted outside Sandia Botanicals at 2406 Comanche Rd NE. “It’s about predator versus prey, and you don’t know which one is which.”

Struggle and metamorphosis are common themes in Gossman’s work, which includes murals as well as smaller pieces on canvas.

His Instagram posts @KyleGossmanart depict creatures with faces turned to stone or with flesh seemingly melting. His Instagram followers are a “select audience,” he says, and he wanted to do something “less creepy and more friendly” for the mural.

“Growing up in Albuquerque, roadrunners were my absolute favorite. It’s the state bird and they’re incredibly beautiful. I love ‘em,” he says. “I saw one catch a snake once, so that image kind of stuck in my mind.”

Gossman used spray paint to execute the mural, which took about a week and a half to complete. He admits spray paint is not an easy medium to use to achieve such precision as in the roadrunner’s black and white feathers. “You have to have one quick motion to get a straight line. It takes a lot of time and practice to figure out how to do that right. In graffiti, it’s called ‘can control.’”

Although he always loved drawing and painting, graffiti enabled Gossman to hone his skills. “There are different types of graffiti, and the only things I’d do were well-executed murals,” he says. “This was in my youth, and I got away from it when the reality of criminal prosecution really stuck in my head.”

In choosing his color palette for the mural, Gossman was intentional, “especially with the grayscale on the roadrunner going from black and white to gray, which is juxtaposed with the color of the snake, which is turquoise with a row of eyes all down its back. “These are colors of the Southwest. And the top portion of the mural, I tried to match with the blue of a clear sky in Albuquerque.”

The Sandia Botanicals mural came about when the store owner, a longtime friend of Gossman’s, asked him to paint it. While he was working on the mural, people would stop to watch and to thank him for adding something colorful and interesting to what otherwise was a blank wall.

“I think art in general is necessary for the human condition. It’s essential, especially on a building like that that seems so sterile and uninviting, to have images that bring people joy or can take them out of their daily routine,” he says. “It’s like stopping to smell the roses.”

Having recently returned to Albuquerque after living in Portland, Gossman would like to do more murals in the area. “I think probably one of the best ways I could give back to the community is to do art in the public space.”

—LISA OCKER

PHOTO BY DON JAMES/ATM