Kennady Osborne’s waterfront painting becomes a 95-foot mural on Imperial tank

A painting inspired by Canatara Beach and Sarnia’s waterfront has taken on a much larger life, with local photography and sign-making expertise helping bring it to Indian Road.

Sarnia’s waterfront, wildlife and summer skies now stretch across an Imperial Oil storage tank on Indian Road, where local artist Kennady Osborne’s painting has been reproduced as a 95-foot-wide mural.

Titled The Water, Our Home, the work measures 30 feet high and is installed on a tank 150 feet in diameter. Osborne, of Seventh Rayn Design Co., drew inspiration from Canatara Beach, using photographic references from Canatara Park, Point Edward and downtown Sarnia.

The colourful scene brings together the Blue Water Bridge, sailboats, a paddleboarder, geese, gulls and a heron, with flowers and foliage framing the water beneath a sunset sky.

For Osborne, seeing the finished installation in person made the scale of the project sink in.

In a Sept. 23 Facebook post, she said she had first been approached about the project the previous summer, with the idea settled this June. She visited the completed mural the day before posting.

“I think I’m still a bit speechless!” she wrote.

The original painting measures 36 by 120 inches, or three by 10 feet. Bringing it to the tank required a collaboration between the artist, Sarnia photographer Richard Beland and Excellent Sign Group.

According to Imperial’s account of the project, Beland photographed the original artwork in three sections at extremely high resolution, then carefully stitched the images together. The process preserved the painting’s colours and textures for reproduction at a much larger size.

Imperial says details of Osborne’s brushstrokes and the original canvas remain visible in the finished mural.

Excellent Sign Group printed the mural in sections and installed it on the tank. Osborne thanked the installation crew in her post and credited Beland with making sure the reproduced colours stayed true to her painting.

She also said Artopia North End Framing was working on a frame for the original canvas.

Osborne, a Haudenosaunee artist who studied Indigenous Visual Culture at OCAD University, also created the welcome mural unveiled in Sarnia City Hall’s lobby in March. That work highlights the relationship between Sarnia-Lambton and the Council of Three Fires Confederacy: the Ojibway, Odawa and Potawatomi peoples.

Her latest work brings her art to another visible location in the city, this time on an industrial structure along Indian Road.

“I am proud to be apart of a community that wants to see artists thrive!!!” Osborne wrote.