A teenage painter has painted an eye-catching mural in Lac La Hache.
Peter Skene Ogden Secondary School student Raina Rees, 15, painted the mural near her father Peter Rees’ food truck, Pete’s Home Style Cooking. The mural features several cartoon characters ranging from the Scooby Doo gang to the cast of Looney Tunes. Raina was inspired to create the mural because she wanted to make the backyard of her house more colourful.
“I made it so that when people come to the food truck they have something to look at that’s cool - that they’re something from the highway that they can see.”
Raina had been a fan of the mystery series since she was a child - watching both it and Looney Tunes.
“I love Scooby-Doo.”
This isn’t the first time Raina has flexed her artistic muscles. The logo for her father’s food truck was also painted by her when she was 11, depicting Rees as a chef. It has since been seen by people across the Cariboo including Forest Grove, Williams Lake and 100 Mile House.
Rees said that he is very pleased with his daughter’s work noting that she’s been drawing for years with pen and paper.
“It’s excellent. I guess she’s going to just keep getting better and better and you know, she just keeps telling me to keep buying the paint, so I keep buying the paint.”
Raina’s new project is painting an old canoe paddle, creating colourful depictions of the sun as well as stars and waves on both sides.
“I am really proud of the paddle I have been working on,” Raina remarked.
Whenever she creates art, Raina said she loves listening to music to help get her in an artistic frame of mind. She credits legendary Jamaican reggae artist Bob Marley for being a major inspiration behind her art, noting her favourite song by him is Is this Love? which she listened to throughout creating the mural.
“I love just listening to my music and just painting.”
When she graduates high school Raina would like to go to post-secondary school to further her artistic interests. She has her eye on the Emily Carr University of Art and Design in Vancouver and if she becomes professional she’d love to paint murals and art for children’s hospitals.
“Eventually I was hoping, you know how in hospitals in children’s rooms, like, I want to paint walls there for that.”
But for now, Raina hopes that she will be able to keep painting more murals around the South Cariboo.
“I want to do a lot more murals - I didn’t really know what I want to do before, but I think I want to go ahead with painting and doing people’s houses and stuff like that.”
