How Fish Turn to Dragons

Story and photos by Joe Timmerman

From landscapes to cityscapes, Keith Wilde brings his passion to life.

Keith Wilde, Athens-based muralist, walks across the street to see his mural as a whole before starting to paint for the day on Thursday, November 4, 2021.

A patient hand moves the paintbrush across a retaining wall with rich lost atlantis pigments blending overtop a shade of a turquoise rivulet. Along the sidewalk of West Carpenter Street in Athens, Ohio, an elaborately colorful story of a fish swimming upstream, on its way to transform into a dragon with the perfectly chanced help of a single fallen coin, is coming to life.

“This is probably my most ambitious work so far,” Keith Wilde, an Athens-based muralist, says. Drops of paint from many murals ago stain the khaki jumpsuit he’s had since he was seventeen as his strong, focused gaze seamlessly turns into an infectious smile. A former landscaper with a degree in art from Kenyon College, where Calvin and Hobbes creator Bill Watterson graduated, Wilde now splashes his coarse brush into ever-murky water as fresh paint strokes merge on his latest public creation. Detailed strokes of ocean abyss are next for a mural that although other-worldly, represents a simple idea close to its creator’s story.

Illustrated in the mural, and in the artist’s personal journey, is the idea that our actions and choices can end up meaning a great deal to others, whether we know it or not.

Keith Wilde paints details on his newest mural on West Carpenter Street in Athens, Ohio, on Thursday, November 4, 2021. Wilde has painted 14 public art projects in the last half-decade, and has been working on this mural since August 9.

Before Wilde transitioned into the fully freelance artist he is today, he taught art classes and focused on landscaping homes and business properties around Athens. His LLC’s name, Wilde Manifestations, was designed with careful consideration to encompass each of his large-scale creative passions: landscaping and painting, without labeling himself to one profession or the other.

One of Wilde’s manifestations happened a few years ago when a woman who lives in town was desperate for someone to cut her grass. The local job led to more in-depth yard maintenance and eventually turned into a backbreaking digging project for a drainage system. While Wilde worked excruciatingly hard under the hot summer sun, the woman smoked cigarettes on her front porch and made conversation, so the two got to know each other.

Eventually, the woman found out Wilde is an artist and she commissioned him to make two paintings for her and her daughter, who worked for Ohio University. The woman’s daughter was planning a student learning trip to the Dominican Republic, and in the corner of a website was an advertisement for muralists to visit the country and create public art. The daughter told Wilde about it and soon after, he ended up in the Caribbean following his passion for making murals in the spring of 2019.

“It was on some level because somebody was desperate for somebody to cut their grass and I said yes,” said Wilde. “I don’t attach a lot of metaphysical specifics to that… but it is pretty clear that when people are pursuing their own goals, there’s others that can help you along.”

Wilde’s crystal blue eyes narrow to refocus on the wall before him as he leans forward just inches away from the nearly 50-foot, three-month-long work in progress — his 24th public art project within half of a decade. All around Athens on cinderblock storefronts, across wooded residences, and above brick streetways, Keith Wilde has left his own unique mark that draws people to stop and stare in places once passed by without notice.

Keith Wilde blends rich lost Atlantis pigments overtop a shade of a turquoise rivulet in Athens, Ohio, on Thursday, Nov. 4, 2021.

On the outside wall of Kindred Market on East State Street is Wilde’s largest, and possibly his most recognizable, mural in the city. “Before the mural was up there it was this big, white cinderblock wall facing the road and facing the parking lot, it was just glaringly ugly,” said Riley Kinnard, Kindred Market general manager. “I knew that I wanted the space to be welcoming and eye-catching, and I thought the mural was the best way to do that — to draw customers in and to beautify the neighborhood.”

Although Athens may seem like an anomaly in its encouragement of public art due to the creative nature of the city, murals are sprawling up in urban spaces across the country. These strategically placed art pieces, as Forbes reports, promote insight into a city’s social, cultural, and political dynamics, as well as artistic aesthetics all while contributing to the success of businesses and making neighborhoods more visually appealing. In his own way, Wilde’s passive action of painting color onto walls impacts people in the community, whether in passing or in lasting ways.

As Wilde brushes another color onto today’s work, he says with a bright grin that despite many of the compliments people make on the street being filled with expletives like “Fuckin sick dude!”, he has many conversations with all kinds of people that make him feel closer to the community as a whole.

“Excuse me, sorry to interrupt you but my daughter loves your painting and wanted to say hello,” a mother says to Wilde while stopping on the sidewalk with her young daughter’s hand snugly fit into her own.

The mother goes on to explain that her daughter is also a painter and that on their way to soccer practice each week they’ve enjoyed being able to watch Wilde’s progress on the mural. “I bet you’ve made mistakes before,” the mother says to Wilde while looking down at her daughter lovingly — asking the question her daughter was too nervous to ask, “What do you do?” After Wilde points towards the mistakes that he plans on fixing along the wide span of the mural, he explains that the big secret is to step back and look at what you have, notice what’s good, then paint over what’s not in order to move forward.

 The mother and daughter have driven away, the afternoon traffic has calmed, and the last drops of the day’s paint have dried into the retaining wall’s bumps and dimples. Keith Wilde silently pauses, takes five steps backward, tilts his head to the left, then tilts his head to the right.

“I can’t believe I’m using this,” says Wilde as he lifts up his thin, multi-stained brush, “to paint this,” he finishes while stretching his arms towards each side of his expansive mural — from the fish, all the way to the dragon.