Peter Karas

195 Horton Street East of Richmond Street

I’m standing outside of the London Community Woodshop, on Horton Street. On the side of the building is a large, basically 10 foot by 60 foot mural that myself, my wife, Corinne Garlick and a number of the members of the community participated in painting.

It’s interesting when you’re painting a mural you know, you’re on site for quite a number of hours and you get to sort of see a different part of the, of the community you live in. So Corinne, both of us lived just down the street, on Clarence street, or we did at the time. Working out on Horton street we got kind of to see, little different side of the neighbourhood you know, little bit more of the hustle and bustle. People going to work, some people travelling through the neighbourhood. You know we met some of the you know the students at the, at the language school, at their dormitory next door. And we met quite a number of people also that they were just walking through ya know. The, the side of that building and the parking lot to which it’s attached, it’s a nice little kind of a shortcut for people. So you kinda got to see people walking by day to day and they were pretty much all, all of them were, you know, very enthusiastic that something was going up on the wall that would kinda beautify the neighbourhood. And we got lots of neat suggestions “Oh, you should, you should paint a train into your painting”, or “you should paint the skyline of the City of London” or all kinds of neat suggestions.

My name is Peter Karas and I am a professional artist. I’ve lived here since 2007.