Moapa Commercial Landscape Improved With Splash Of Color

The Muddy River Bar and Grill has gotten a welcome splash of color over the past month or so. The northwest exterior wall of the popular Moapa restaurant is now painted with a large mural depicting scenes of natural beauty specific to the Moapa landscape.

The mural depicts a beautiful Warm Springs scene. A pool of clear blue spring water appears in the foreground. Plenty of local plant and animal life are featured.

The mural was painted by local artist Joan Dey. Dey has lived in Overton, and has been active in the local art scene, since 2002. She originally hails from the beautiful Morro Bay area of Califo

rnia. She enjoys painting the outdoors, landscapes and nature scenes. She explains that the scene being painted on the wall of the Moapa restaurant is meant to depict Warm Springs back in the olden days. She points out that all of the plant life shown is actually common to the Warm Springs ecosystem. She has also painted a number of bighorn sheep into the scene that have come down to drink at the water. “The bighorn sheep are meant to be a symbol for the local indian tribes that existed here,” Dey said.

The breathtaking landscape which is depicted in the distance also came directly from the area. “A lot of the features of hills and mountains that you see there in the background are painted directly from some point over there,” Dey said pointing in the direction of the Mormon Mountains to the north.

Despite her varied artistic background, Dey said that this is only her fourth time around with a large scale mural. “I’m still finding my feet with this medium,” she said.

The Muddy River mural has taken Dey about a month to complete. “Usually I would be able to do something like this in about a week,” she said. “But I’ve been limited by the heat.” She could only work for about four hours a day during the early morning.

Dey does all of the work using common paint rollers and house paint brushes. She said that painting murals on walls is tricky because of the different textures on the surface of a wall. Each wall can present a very different challenge. But the unique nature of each surface can also be an inspiration, she said.

“Sometimes you see something take shape in the wall that wasn’t part of your plan,” Dey said. “So you follow that and do it and it makes things very interesting. You never know what the wall will dicate to you.”

Dey started painting murals with a project for a business district in her hometown of Morro Bay. She shows photographs of the beautiful maritime scene depicting the local bay landscape. Dey also painted the walls of her grand-daughter’s bedroom. “She wanted it to look like she lived deep in the forest,” Dey said, showing photographs of the lush green murals.

More recently, Dey was commissioned to paint a large mural for the City of Mesquite during a Mesquite Days celebration. The mural, located on Mesquite Blvd. was part of a downtown beautification effort and depicts natural landscape features surrounding the Virgin Valley area.

That mural attracted the attention of Muddy River Bar and Grill owner Kent Slight, who hired Dey to paint a large-scale scene on the wall of his restaurant.

The mural is part of a larger plan for the space at the Muddy River. Slight has built an outdoor patio area on the side of the building facing the mural. As more pleasant weather approaches, he plans to open the area for outdoor dining. Outdoor lighting and cool water misters will also be installed for the comfort of the restaurant patrons. “We are even planning to have a big screen TV out here during the football season,” said restaurant manager, Ben Haskell.