MEL COLEMAN

This site specific mural was painted in 2025 as part of the StreetART Toronto Barrier Program.

These barriers are located in Little Portugal, on Lansdowne Ave just south of Dundas Ave West, Toronto, ON,

The design draws inspiration from the neighbourhood as well as Kintsugi, the Japanese practice of repairing broken ceramics with gold. It features four traditional Portuguese ceramic plates, each marked by painted gold cracks that highlight history, repair, and resilience.

Ceramic plates are everyday objects that hold memory through food, gathering, and shared experience. In Little Portugal, cuisine plays a central role in cultural connection and community life. By presenting these plates as fractured and mended, the mural reflects perseverance and continuity in the face of change.

The gold seams emphasize healing as a visible, ongoing process, celebrating what has been repaired rather than replaced. The work honours cultural identity, care, and the quiet strength found in preservation.

This mural draws directly from the philosophy of kintsugi, the Japanese practice of repairing broken objects with gold, mending the visible fractures rather than concealing them. A crouched woman paints gold on the cracks sprawling her body. Beside her rests a bowl holding the paint—also fractured and mended—positioning the body and the vessel as parallel forms shaped by use, breakage, and repair.

On the reverse side, she is seen walking away, her repaired cracks still visible, the brush carried forward in hand. Healing is not presented as resolution, but as an ongoing process.

Rendered in a restrained palette of burnt red, coral, and ochre, with minimal line work, the mural emphasizes material, gesture, and process. Simple plant forms and a moon reference cycles of growth and time, reinforcing the idea that repair is not an end point, but an ongoing state of becoming.

Located 3301 Markham Rd (Markham Rd and Select Ave). Scarborough, ON

This was a community mural that was created in partnership with the Town of Caledon, for Caledon Day, June 2025.

The public were encouraged to help paint the ‘paint by numbers mural’ which would later be installed beside the other community mural created for Caledon Culture Days in 2024.

The imagery is inspired by the local ecology featuring wheat, milkweed, daisies, black eyed susans, bumble bees, monarch butterflies, and the bedstraw hawk moth.

Latex and acrylic paint on MDO Panel, 2025.

“Butterfly Pride” -Early Grey Senior Public School

The design process included a collaborative component with the students from the (GSA) Gay-Straight Alliance. Butterflies were selected as powerful symbols of transformation, rebirth and hope, representing new beginnings and personal growth.

15 different pride flags are featured in the wings of the butterflies and moths including, Progressive with Intersex, Bisexual, Lesbian, Pan Sexual, Gay Man, Demi Boy, Demi Girl, Aroace, Gender Queer, Asexual, Non Binary, Gender Fluid, Abrosexual , and A Gender.

The GSA Students assisted with painting, labelling their moth or butterfly, adding personalized doodles as a background pattern and their handprint to offer support for future students.

This mural that was created in June 2025. It is 267sqft. Latex and Acrylic Paint on Concrete wall.

This mural was completed in September 2024 for the Town of Caledon for one of their Culture Days Events. Everyone in the community was invited to paint the mural inspired by the local ecosystem. Many people from all ages left their mark throughout the day.

The mural itself titled, “The Bedstraw Hawk Moth and Milkweed”
draws inspiration from the unique roles of the bedstraw hawk moth and milkweed in their ecosystems. The bedstraw hawk moth, or “gallium sphinx moth,” is admired for its rapid, hummingbird-like flight and striking wing patterns, while milkweed (Asclepias spp.) is essential as a primary food source for monarch butterfly larvae. Together, the moth and milkweed support biodiversity and ecological balance by fostering pollinator species and sustaining complex interactions within their shared habitats.

In this performance, I use my body as both a tool and a subject, covering myself in paint and repeatedly sitting in chairs to create layered, abstract impressions. These marks—formed through movement, weight, and repetition—resemble Rorschach paintings, eliciting a psychological and emotional inquiry into the self.

The history of Rorschach imagery—from its origins as a psychological test developed by Hermann Rorschach to its adaptation in Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism, and contemporary art—deeply informs this work. The way my body’s imprints create unpredictable marks, much like the Surrealists' use of decalcomania, suggests a similar surrender to organic process, transformation and the unconscious.

My work becomes a mirror, reflecting the personal narratives and emotional states of those who engage with it. The chairs, imprinted with my presence, become more than objects; they are invitations for contemplation, spaces for viewers to project their own interpretations and emotions. They act as vessels for transformation, encouraging a process of transmutation: a space where personal histories, traumas, and memories might be reimagined, reshaped, and healed. Through this act of bodily inscription, I explore the intersections of identity, memory, and materiality, offering a site where the ephemeral and the enduring converge.

This work was completed in May 2024 and was commissioned by Art & Water Cultural Group.

Merge Condos (Lobby) is located at 90 Glen Everest Rd, Scarborough, ON

Created for LCH Developments.

This Mural Triptych is inspired by the Scarborough Bluffs located just around the corner from this site.
The painting technique leans into abstraction with a heavy emphasis on mark making, while still being representational of the bluffs.

This mural was completed in June of 2023

This mural was created for the Cliffside Condos Presentation Centre with LCH Developments. It is located at 2229 Kingston Rd, Scarborough, ON

This mural reflects a contemporary, painterly and abstract interpretation of the Scarborough Bluffs.

This mural was completed in 2023

This mural was completed in the fall of 2022.

It was inspired by the milkweed plant and the Junction.

It includes a map of the neighbourhood in Toronto.

Milkweed’s nectar attracts many types of insects and pollinators such as bees, wasps, butterflies and hummingbirds.

It is located on a private property. It can be seen in the back alley of Dundas St West, just north of Bloor St between Chelsea Ave and Glenlake Ave.

@alywyzmurals is now @mcva_murals

This project was painted in Summer 2021 as part of Toronto’s StreetARToronto (StART) Barrier Program, which commissions artists to transform concrete traffic barriers into public art. The program reimagines functional infrastructure as creative space and is a key component of StART’s broader city-wide initiatives. The mural is located at Parliament Street and Richmond Street in Toronto and was created using the assigned area palette of blue, green, pink, and black.

These chairs were completed in May 2022
with Art & Water and their Muskoka Chair, Waterfront Project.

These chairs were displayed at Toronto’s waterfront and later available for purchase through a silent auction.

https://www.art-water.ca/muskoka-chairs

Merge Spaces is a beautiful state-of-the-art and amenity-rich coworking space. It's all about bringing the comforts of home to your office experience.

https://mergespaces.com

This project included 11 murals and was completed in 2022 in partnership with Cesar Rodriguez.

2022

This painted electrical box features floral imagery inspired by traditional Hungarian embroidery, referencing motifs connected to my Hungarian heritage. Red poppies and blue forget-me-nots are rendered with loose, painterly brushwork, shifting these folk patterns away from precise decoration and toward expressive mark-making. The work brings warmth and softness to an everyday piece of urban infrastructure, translating cultural pattern into a contemporary painted form.

This mural was located in Toronto’s Christie Pitts Park.

It was commissioned by The David Suzuki Foundation and organized by Blue Dot Org.

This design was inspired by green initiatives in the city of Toronto and was painted with the inclusion of public volunteers.

It was completed in 2018 but has since been tagged and is no longer visible to the public.

Artist Assistants : Patricia Zimecki, Kevin Foster and the public throughout the event

Free Art Initiative with ALYWYZ
Lead: Mel Coleman
Toronto, Private Residence

Independent mural in the Junction Toronto. Private residence

This mural was painted in 2018 by Mel Coleman (ALYWYZ), with assistance from Mikey Li and Joefrey Anthony.

This mural was painted in 2016 as my first project with StreetARToronto, part of the City’s initiative to bring art into unconventional public spaces and beautify the urban environment. Located at Islington Avenue and Milady Road in Toronto, the work features an abstract arrangement of rocks and stones rendered using a combination of spray paint, brushwork, and roller application.

At the time, the project was rooted in ideas of people and place and functioned as a quiet memorial for my friend’s father, who was an avid rock collector. Stones became a symbolic language—representing heritage, foundation, emotional weight, and strength. Their presence speaks to both permanence and accumulation, mirroring how memory is built over time.

This mural was created alongside my site-specific painting series Art at the Lake in the Kawarthas, where I met my friend and her father. The work reflects an early moment in my practice where landscape, personal connection, and material symbolism intersected, laying the groundwork for my continued interest in site-responsive public art and meaning-making through everyday forms.