We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Roger Dolin a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Roger, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Can you talk to us about how you learned to do what you do?
I went to art school to learn about making art. At school I learned design fundamentals, composition, color, a few different medium (acrylic painting, watercolor, etching, drawing, and figure drawing). I liked being in school and I looked forward to my student projects. When I got out of school I was not prepared for living on my own. I got a job doing some drafting which came in handy later on. I had dreamed of owning my own business and being a full time artist. In 1983 I was laid off and my roommate and I started our own business making architectural drawings and painting murals, We continued to learn our craft on the job. We talked to people around us. One of my first jobs was painting murals on Sunset Blvd for a greeting card store. They had a big wall and I was hired to paint seasonal imagery on there. Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, etc. They let me do some pretty creative things on that wall. Above us on the top of that building was a billboard and back then they used to paint them by hand. The billboard artists were interested in what we were doing and vice versa and then they showed me how they do their images. I was always talking to people that came by. Eventually a woman asked if I could paint murals in a hospital and I started building a clientele.
Roger, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
I am primarily a painter. I have painted murals under the name Mural Environments, Inc since 1983. In addition I continued to make paintings and exhibit my work in local galleries. I am drawn to realism, though usually in a contemporary manner. I love the impressionists, post impressionists, and contemporary figurative work. My first love was Michelangelo and the Sistine Chapel. Today I am also influenced by street art especially Kent Twitchell who brings a fine art pallet to the street.
Today I still make murals, but have developed a new approach to my mural making. I also continue to make paintings. I teach now. I have an acrylics class at a local art center, and I teach Industrial Design as an adjunct professor at a local college. I don’t really know much about industrial design but my boss does and I try to teach his curriculum that he has developed over the years. Ironically my boss used to work for me when I worked as Mural Environments. I had a good size crew for many years. Today, I teach engineers and designers how to draw and aspects of design that I guess I have a pretty good understanding of.
My method of painting both murals and paintings is to work on a synthetic material, similar to canvas, in the comfort of my studio and then reassemble the pieces to form a painting or a mural. My latest mural is on a building on the island of Catalina in the city of Avalon. The total mural size is 72′ x 16′. It was painted on 60 pieces of material each 60″ x 48″. The pieces get glued up to the building and then wherever there are gaps or areas that don’t line up I go to the site (but only for days instead of months) and fill them in. Then we coat the entire wall with this state-of-the-art anti-graffiti coating called Mural Guard.
I developed this process after first learning about it from art installer, Nathan Zackheim. Then continued to develop it over the years while working with kids in the Glendale Unified School district, teaching them the art of mural making.
The paintings are mostly for me and to try to give people the feeling I get when I look at nature. I was a figurative painter for most of my career and I still love painting people, but I switched to landscape during the pandemic since I was hiking a lot in the mountains around Los Angeles. I love the views of the city from up there. I work from pictures I capture with my cell phone. The detail and camera options are so amazing now that I can really focus on some of the detail.
The murals are mostly for others. I look at that as a commissioned thing and that work will end up with the commissioner and so I try to bring their vision to life. I am very pleased when I can help people to bring their visions to life.
I do have a unique style and method of working. It’s not as detailed as say, Kent Twitchell, but he already does that. And it’s not too abstract. It’s just right for me. I like to work from photographic references and make them as 3- dimensional as I can.
I am proud that I have earned my living as a muralist over the last 40 years and have continued to grow and hope to keep painting for a long time.
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
I met the owner for the mural in Catalina in November of 2022, It took a couple months to iron out a contract and and provide him with a hand painted rendering, The level of detail that he wanted was more than I had anticipated and that delayed the time line we had agreed on by several months. The theme was the annual 4th of July Parade in Avalon and we both had wanted it to be completed and installed by April of 2023. But by April it was obvious that it would not even be finished by July 4. I was straight with the client and he was very accepting of the revised time frame. Around July of 2023 I was able to calculate how long the mural was actually going to take to complete and instead of July 4th, 2023 we agreed upon November 11, 2023 (Veteran’s Day) another fitting tribute to our vets and the country and his legacy. We got the mural to the island in pieces and started to install it. My crew was not getting along with each other and at some point I lost one member and I ended up having to help with the installation as well as do all the touch-ups. It came down to the last day or two but in the end we got it up and the owner was thrilled. Two weeks after the mural was installed and coated he passed away. He lived long enough to see his baby on the wall and then his frail body gave out. He was 81, diabetic and on dialysis twice a week. Toward the end I was painting as much as I could hoping that I could finish. My wife, Emily Goff (artist, art teacher and also my assistant on this project) and I were painting long hours to get the painting done in the studio. We were both hoping the client would live long enough to see it. When we got the mural on the wall, he walked the length of it and exclaimed, ” We did it, Roger, We did it!” I’m really sorry he had to leave us, but he contributed a beautiful token of his life to the island he loved.
What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?
For me it’s definitely bringing some portion of my reality to life so other people can experience some of the beauty that I live with every day. Another aspect I have come to love about my work is helping to bring someone else’s vision to life. I am so grateful that I was able to live and earn as an artist. At times I felt like I didn’t deserve it. Other times I felt like I deserved more than I got. I don’t have a lot to show for my years of art making. A few murals have survived. A few people have my paintings up in their homes. I was able to buy a house with my earnings and not a lot of artists can say that. But my dream, my goal, my vision was always the path. I got to live and earn as a creative person, making art (not all of it good) but learning as I went, always willing to try new things and keep on trudging.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.rogerdolin.com
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/rogerdolin
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/rogerdolin
Image Credits
All photos by Roger Dolin except the one with me in it which was taken by Guy Guilbert