EVERETT – Roger Whiting will only be an Everett resident for about 24 more hours, but he’s leaving a little something behind.
Jennifer Buchanan / The Herald
Whiting spent the past month, mostly Saturdays and late evenings, painting a mural inside the Imagine Children’s Museum parking garage.
The 26-year-old, who has a bachelor’s degree in illustration from the Rhode Island School of Design, approached the museum and volunteered his talent, equipment and time.
“This is someone who actually approached us, and it’s a young person,” said Nancy Johnson, the museum’s executive director. “I just find that real heartwarming to find that generosity among young people.”
Though Whiting has a limited mural portfolio, Johnson decided to take a chance on the artist and invited him to paint the museum’s parking garage.
“When you’ve got a young person sitting there who says, ‘I can do this, give me a chance,’ it’s pretty hard not to let them have at it,” Johnson said. “I could tell he was very serious about what he’s doing.”
Whiting will finish the mural this week, and then will move to Salt Lake City to start a mural business. He also illustrated an upcoming children’s book about the lives of leaders from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and he wants to be in Utah for book signings.
The lease on his apartment was up Tuesday, but he’s not about to skip town – he’s got a mural to finish. He’ll stay with friends until he finishes the painting.
“I knew I was moving out of state and that I was going to start a mural business,” Whiting said. “I just wanted another mural in my portfolio before I go.”
By day he is a bilingual banker serving Spanish speakers at a Washington Mutual call center. By night, after work and usually from 9 p.m. to midnight, he is a painter.
His museum mural revolves around instruments of exploration – a telescope, a diving helmet, a computer – and the discovery those devices inspire.
On cold nights, he wore four layers of clothing and donned headphones to listen to music, especially jazz, while he painted.
Jazz, he said, was an apt soundtrack for this mural.
“There’s something fun in the complexity of jazz. Most of my murals are normally more shape-based with details mixed in,” Whiting said. “(Like jazz), they hop between complexity and simplicity.”
Reporter Jennifer Warnick: 425-339-3429 or jwarnick@heraldnet.com.
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