In blue jeans, a denim jacket and a tan brown hat, Bob Palmer stood admiring his artwork with a big white smile across his slightly paint covered face.
The 73-year-old muralist, Bob Palmer, is in the 40th year of running his own painting business. The well-traveled muralist received the task of painting a mural for the city of Stroud after they accepted his bid over several other artists. “It’s because people did their research on me,” Palmer said. “In fact, I told them, this project isn’t easy.
“The design is what I call real tight and it’s not an easy project, especially on an uneven wall. I said, ‘your design does not quite fit the design of the building, but we can make it work.’
“I’ve only done about 4,000 to 5,000 murals so this is just one. I think they did their homework and looked at me and thought, well, if we’re going to put something this big in the little town of Stroud, let’s do the best we can.”
Palmer comes from Walters and his artwork can be tracked in countless cities along Route 66, a familiarity he believes helped him get the job, where Stroud tasked him with embodying the spirit of their city on the side of the True Value Hardware building.
“I think every small town has a story to tell,” Palmer said. “And, there’s no better way to tell your story than through visuals.”
This visual story required nearly 40 hours of work over the span of three days, a massive job that Palmer couldn’t do himself.
The city of Stroud requested that he allow local artists to help with the job, including Courtney Lyon, Paula Ackerman, Shane Cox and Holly McHughes, who all followed Palmer’s lead and helped carry the workload.
Local artist Courtney Lyon spoke on how she and the other artists contributed.
“It was really an all hands on deck situation,” Lyon said. “Mr. Palmer was in charge of the water tower, the skyliner and the highschool. Mr. Shane did the rock cafe and windows, which Mr. Palmer actually free-handed those and gave him a stencil to paint on. All the animals you see, Holly McHughes did
Photos/Jentezen Smith those. Paula Ackerman really took pride in painting the train because it was her father’s train. I painted Sally and Doc Hudson, some of the Stroud regional medical center, Sac & Fox Nation and 90 percent of the bugle boy, of course Mr. Palmer did go back and palmerize it.”
“Palmerizing it” is a term that fellow artists use to describe Palmer’s unique style that is consistent across all of his art, which each contributing artist followed. He specifically “Palmerized it” by adding the scenery on each side of the painting, an unassigned piece of work that he felt necessary to complete the mural. “It just screams Oklahoma and small towns,” Palmer said. “Everyone’s probably got a fence and can identify with a fence, and then just putting a few creatures in it. They actually got more bang for their buck, because to me now, it fits the space.” Hoping to capture the essence of Stroud, Palmer surrounded the mural centerpiece by the countryside to merge history with a visual that every local knows. Palmer succeeded in that, if the town’s response is any indication. “When you get farmers in blue overalls and they’re embracing what you’re doing, you’re communicating to the salt of the earth, down-home people that love their town, love what it stands for and you are representing it well,” Palmer said. Only a week after the artwork’s completion, citizens are already embracing it as True Value Hardware acknowledged numerous people are already taking pictures with the mural. Not only should citizens appreciate what the mural embodies, but also the fact they now have a Palmer painting. “I’ve done work in Canada, Mexico, and Croatia, really all over, Greece, Italy,” Palmer said. “Stroud, Oklahoma can be proud. They’ve got a Palmer, you know.”