Several Months ago I got a very unique phone call.
A gentleman called my cell phone #, asking for an artist with the name "Suzanne", who painted murals, who lived in the Los Angeles area...
3 out of 3, not bad...
who Painted a mural in his back yard 10+ years ago which is in need of touch up...
Hmm.... that's NOT me!
I replied to the caller, "Ironically, my name is Suzanne, and I do paint murals, however I didn't paint that mural." I then learned that he'd searched and found a link to my art and website, and now here we are...
So I proceeded to invite him to send me some photos of the mural in question and I would be happy to take a look, and provide a restoration job on the existing mural. I have a happy realization that this other artist, named Suzanne, did a wonderful painting of a beach scene, with palm trees, a panoramic view of the Santa Monica Bay, and the scene is very much something I would paint, and the style is very much similar to what I do as well... so yes, I could do this work. :)
5 months later, he calls again and I visit the property.
The back wall in question had been subject to water damage from the adjacent property, and caused cracking and peeling paint in several spot. Now that the neighbor has fixed the cause of the water leak and no further damage is expected, and the wall has dried out we can now proceed to repair and refresh the mural.
Monday, I was all set to start on the project, and got set back due to rain... Yes, a Rain Delay in May? Oh well... so let's try again later.
Thursday: May 9th...
Mural Day One:
I started off by cleaning and scraping off the damaged and blistering sections of the mural
I cleaned around the areas that were not damaged, and took care to preserve my "namesake's" signature.
When I am finished I will mark "Original design by - "Suzanne", and note the Restoration with my own signature below.
Of course I am curious who the other "Suzanne" is. It's a curious mystery....
The section with the palm trees was fairly quick to clean... and I have put on a layer of masonry primer.
Here's a photo of the crack and damage on the wall, above the girl's shoulders, the sailboat may be a loss, but i did take paint samples so that I can match the tones and placement.
What a wonderful picture of the little girl (his daughter at age 5), and I am nervous that too much of her will be damaged under. Look between her two arms, you can see the blistering paint. It continues through her torso. The sand castle is also damaged. I hope to keep this as authentic as possible.
I return next Monday to continue the work.
Before starting work I took some more progressive photos... just to keep track of what I'd already done. Clean and Primer where the palm trees were, and now re-paint and add some life to this section. This would also challenge me to mix and test the colors on the spot...
I loosely marked in the shape of the palms and stood back to make sure the scale and shape were somewhat accurate. I think I did a pretty good job.
Matching the blues and greens wasn't so tough, but getting it to blend, new to old was a little tricky. But this has been a fun challenge.
I was sad when I got to the section of the mural with the little girl building a sand castle. I really hoped to have a simple repair... but the cracked wall underneath had left a huge air / water bubble that just popped the paint off from the wall. 
