The mural features a boy painted in black using spray paint to create a color-filled scene featuring splashes of white, red, purple, yellow and blue, all centered by a massive Tyrannosaurus rex and soaring Pterodactyls.
Title: A World of Innocent Discovery
Artist: Cedric Douglas
Materials: Spray paint, stencil
Location: Exterior wall of the Behrakis Health Sciences Center on Leon Street facing Centennial Common.
About:
Cedric Douglas’ passion for street art was sparked the moment he got his hands on a can of Krylon Ultra Flat Black spray paint.
“It was almost like magic,” the Boston artist recalls.
He was still a kid at the time and was amazed by the possibilities. Just about anything he could think up, he could now create. His only limits were his imagination and the amount of wall space he had to work with.
In spring 2016, just a semester after serving as Northeastern University’s artist in residence, Douglas completed his mural “A World of Innocent Discovery.” The mural is meant to serve as an homage to his younger self, but also as a commentary that the world is full of endless exciting possibilities, he says.
“It touches on the inner child within all of us, and I think a lot of people like it because of that,” he says.
Created using UV-resistant spray paint and stencil, the mural features a boy painted in black using spray paint to create a color-filled scene featuring splashes of white, red, purple, yellow and blue, all centered by a massive Tyrannosaurus rex and soaring Pterodactyls.
“As a kid, I loved dinosaurs,” says Douglas. “One thing about the dinosaur is you have this innocent little kid and then you have this vicious dinosaur, but the kid is not afraid, just in wonder. It’s an interesting relationship between the two.”
The mural is one of several projects Douglas has worked on for Northeastern. He also assisted in creating an interactive canvas with other art faculty that involved 100 participants, as well as various other initiatives meant to bring more public art to the Boston campus.
“I did the residency because my work isn’t just mural painting,” he says. “It’s really community engagement plus mural painting. It was an extension of that.”