Oneonta Artist Captures Essence
of Our Region Using Spray Paint
By IAN KENYON
ONEONTA
On a 2015 visit to San Francisco, James Mcilroy stopped to observe a work by Austrian urban and graffiti artist, Nychos. The split animal anatomy in a spray paint medium left an impression on the curious Mcilroy that opened a new thought process—and inevitably would result in a major public artistic contribution to the community back home in Oneonta, bringing new life to the historic Ford Sales Building on Market Street.
“This was before I was doing any kind of serious painting,” Mcilroy recalled. “I was so impressed by the scale and started to pick the process apart: ‘okay, Nychos sketched this first and then came in with a flat color here and separated the values and did a complementary color scheme here’.”
