Local artist Elle Benage recently completed a mural in downtown Battle Ground depicting a pastoral landscape and the words “Dream It. Discover It. Live It.”
The mural is located on the side of a building at 510 E. Main St.
Benage started the project thanks to a connection from a friend.
“An interior designer friend of mine, she is redoing an office front for a company called United Country Real Estate, and they’re moving their office to Main Street of Battle Ground,” Benage said. “She had mentioned to me that the owners wanted to have a mural on the side of their building, so she referred me to do the project.”
Benage met the company’s owner, Whitney Johnson, who hired her for the project. Although Johnson didn’t have a specific idea for the mural, Benage said United Country is known for selling farmland, so “he wanted the mural to somehow incorporate or compliment what they did, which is selling beautiful farmland in Battle Ground and the surrounding areas.”
Benage said Johnson wanted the mural to be bright, colorful, and “something that could be a gift to the people of Battle Ground” as they walk around Main Street and shop. She also envisioned the mural as a spot where people can stop to take photos or selfies with the work of art.
“Those kinds of murals are called ‘interactive murals,’ where they kind of invite people to come interact with them, and so he wanted something that people could come up close to and look at,” she said.
During the painting process, Benage worked with interior designer Emily Powers, who works with 360 Interiors.
“Her and I brainstormed coming up with this idea of doing a landscape of all the iconic scenes in Battle Ground, like Battle Ground Lake, Mount St. Helens, the beautiful rolling hills, and the pine trees, but then also framing it inside of an archway,” Benage said. “Then I came up with the idea of painting some native flowers and leaves on the archway to kind of add a nice framed-in border for the mural.”
From there, she added the phrase Johnson wanted on the archway. She said the whole scene of the painting invites people to “dream up your ideal place to be” and live in the “beautiful place” it depicts.
Benage said the painting process took 25 hours in total. About five to 10 hours were spent brainstorming ideas with Johnson and Powers.
Benage typically does murals inside residential homes. She has a bachelor’s degree in studio art and graphic design. She’s done commissioned art for the past 15 years.
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Benage said she had to reassess how she does art and how she wanted to run a business.
“We also, at that time, moved from the Midwest out to Camas, Washington, and I just loved all of the murals, like in the Portland and Vancouver area. There’s so much beautiful public art that people just get to walk around and enjoy,” Benage said. “I decided to kind of shift my focus and start doing murals and so I’ve been doing them for the past two years, and I’m really loving doing art on that kind of scale.”
Benage’s work can be found online at enlivenmurals.com.
