Top photo BY Brian Goddard

Outdoor murals aren’t a part of Downtown’s landscape, but with the completion of a colorful painting on the Valley Youth Theatre building, one man hopes to change all that.

On a suffocating summer night Downtown, Roy Sproule sits atop a ladder blending paint, eyeing his cinder block canvas outside with only two 500-watt halogen bulbs for light.
“It’s hard because I’m not seeing true colors,” he says. “It may end up being too vibrant; I may have to tone it down.”
During Arizona’s summer months, night painting was his only option. Four days a week, Sproule would perch outside the Valley Youth Theatre office at First and Fillmore streets from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. to paint a massive mural on the side of the building.
While this mural isn’t Sproule’s first, it’s definitely the largest. Spanning 69 feet wide and 11 feet tall, Sproule says the high-traffic building was “just right” for his artwork.
Sproule approached Valley Youth representatives in December, presenting the idea of a mural on the office building’s north wall. They were enthusiastic, he says, especially after learning he would donate the project in order to help build his portfolio.
The 26-year-old Detroit native has been painting since high school, and he has since experimented with various media: canvas, fresco and eventually exterior walls, an art style that hasn’t been explored much in Phoenix. But all for the better, Sproule says.
“It feels like it’s more alive, more wanted here than it was in Detroit,” he says. “Phoenix is a great place to be doing artwork. People are more open.”
He says the lack of public murals in Phoenix isn’t stopping the city or its citizens from accepting his style of art. He hopes this work will help push a mural movement in the Valley.
“There are just some things you can’t do in small spaces,” he says. “Large images have a different effect on people.”
Sproule began the mural in March after creating a collage of more than 30 characters, including the theatre’s more famous alumni like singer Jordin Sparks and actress Emma Stone, and famous children’s story characters like the cowardly lion in The Wizard of Oz. He expects the piece to be complete in December.
Sproule has donated huge amounts of time and money to the project. He says he has used about 16 gallons of industrial paint at a cost of $1,000 – all while working full-time as an avionics technician at Luke Air Force Base.
Theatre officials are well aware of this and are thankful for the contribution, says Producing Artistic Director Bobb Cooper.
“I thought, what a great idea to have a pictorial history of what we’ve done on the wall,” he says. “It’s exciting for the kids that are a part of the history that’s on that wall, too.”
Cooper was so impressed with his work that he asked Sproule to paint four smaller walls inside the theatre. Sproule says he can’t wait to start the new project and plans to continue creating large-scale gems across the Valley.
“I’d like to do everything I could do to make art bigger in this town,” he says.
— Celeste Sepessy