Graffiti artist reflects on painting iconic, haunting George Floyd mural 5 years later
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One of the most recognizable images to arise from tributes and commemorations of George Floyd and the impact of his death is a 12-foot tall, black-and-white mural, originally placed at the corner of 38th Street and Chicago Avenue, where Floyd took his last breath.
It's dark and haunting; the whites of Floyd's deep-set eyes are nearly invisible. Created by Minneapolis-based graffiti artist Peyton Scott Russell, the interpretation of Floyd’s selfie has made its way around the globe. Russell joined MPR News host Cathy Wurzer on Morning Edition to talk about what drove him to pick up a can of spray paint and create “Icon of a Revolution” back in May 2020.
The following has been lightly edited for length and clarity. Listen to the conversation by clicking the player button above.
Why did you want to paint George Floyd?
First of all, I grew up on that corner from birth to 12 years old, so it's like my wonder years. We would go to that corner, Cup Foods, for candy and treats. It was a convenience store, and it was also the place that had the first video games in the late ‘70s, early ‘80s. So all the neighborhood kids would meet there. It really has a special place for my childhood and my growth.
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When this event happened, immediately I just felt drawn, viscerally. And also George Floyd is very similar to my dad, a very dark-skinned black man. And just watching that video kind of put me in that position, like, what if that was my father? I just really felt a call to action.
Right away, I was ready to go out [to protest] physically, like everyone else. And I had mentors that told me to slow down, calm down. You have kids, you're a community member, you’re a community leader, a role model, and you need to think of something smarter. As an artist, do something that has more impact, has a lasting impact, that can reach more people. And that's that's how the the birth of this idea started.
How did the mural come together?
I want to give appreciation flowers out to John Hock from Northeast Sculpture | Gallery Factory. He was very instrumental in the installation of the piece, as were Northeast Sculpture’s interns. And a huge shoutout to Andrew MacGuffie. This is really a collaboration between him and I. MacGuffie is a fellow sculptor, and he had always wanted to do some street art. He had talked about it for more than three years, and we'd never done anything. And so when this event happened, he called me and said, “Hey, I think we should do something.” And it was sort of like a divine intervention, almost. You know, I'm not a religious guy, but there were some powers guiding this along the way.
The next day, he showed up with the lumber, two-by-fours, plywood, and he was the one who actually built the 12-by-12 canvas. And through his ingenuity of making sculpture and large-scale sculpture and installation, we were able to move this around, get it into my studio, and I spent the night creating the piece.
I wanted to project Mr. Floyd's face and then just trace and outline the face on the canvas, but my studio wasn't large enough to get the projector back far enough to have it fit in the composition correctly, so I had to resort to old-school scale and enlargement with the grid, drafting lines, which I used to do in the ‘80s and the ‘90s. That was the fortunate thing: It kind of got me away from technology and to freestyle.
What about the high-contrast style?
Mr. Floyd's selfie started to circulate, and at that time, I was doing teaching workshops with stencils. As I started to manipulate that selfie, I started to recognize that hard black-and-white imagery and this ghostly aesthetic came across as I was messing with the levels, and I was like, That's it. I'm just gonna stick to this black, white, a little grayscale in the middle, and I'll stick with that. It was just me playing with the contrast at the time.
What did you think when it became clear that you created this statement piece?
So I didn't realize what had happened until weeks later after it was installed, and it started to live because it was still curfew at this time, and people were out protesting. Our city was burning and smoldering, and so I spent the night in my studio painting this piece, and the next morning, my studio mates came through, and as they were walking down the hall, and people just stopped people in their tracks, and they were like, “dude, what?” like?
Honestly, I wept a few times creating the piece, and I largely don't even remember painting it again. It's pretty surreal. My kids were also with me through most of it, and they filmed me on my phone, unbeknownst to me. So I have documentation of creating the piece, but I don't remember actually painting it.
How did it get to George Floyd Square?
The next morning, it was finished and I want to give another shoutout to Solid Metal Arts. They were instrumental in using their boom crane to pull the piece out of the studio and load it up on the flatbed.
I was trying to create a disruption, sort of in your face, you know, look what you guys did, kind of thing. You know, my act for protest. Originally, I wanted it to be an act of street art, anonymously installed in the middle of the night. Let it pop up like a mushroom — anonymous, unannounced — but the piece was so big and I needed a crew. Nobody was interested in helping me at 3 or 4 o'clock in the morning, especially with riot cops around and curfew. So this ended up being a middle-of-the-day mission.
So we pulled up in the square. Everybody that was there at the time kind of stopped what they were doing and made room. And still, I didn't know where we were going to install this. And as we kept looking around, someone in the crowd was like, “install it on the bus shelter. It's five yards from where it happened.” I didn't see that bus shelter, because the bus shelter is brown and the background of the store is brown, so it kind of disappears. And so we dismantled it from the flatbed, and everybody that was there, like maybe 15 to 20 people, grabbed the edge of it and walked it across the street.
And when I talk about divine intervention, the piece is 12-by-12. That was just something I rattled off the top of my head. And when we put it on the bus shelter, the bus shelter is 12 feet exactly. We installed it, and there it sat. And from then on, people discovered who I was and my email just incredibly blew up. Social media went off the charts, and I had to actually hide for a minute because I didn't know really how to handle that.
Do you foresee the mural living in a museum?
I would love for this to go to the Smithsonian and to live there. But ultimately, there's always been talk of the square creating a memorial museum there on 38th and Chicago, and I would love for that piece to live there. And until that happens, I want to keep the piece in my possession where I can protect it from political motives, ulterior [motives], hidden agendas. I really want this piece to exist so that the masses can continue to learn from it.
You've been an artist for a long time, and now you're known for this piece. Are you OK with that?
I have mixed feelings about that, because, again, I'm not a protest artist. I'm an activist. I really like abstraction and graffiti art, and I'm a teaching artist, and I didn't want to be pigeonholed and boxed into “the guy that made the George Floyd face.” So part of my activation of the piece is to use that platform because the interest in graffiti has softened, I think, because of the civil unrest and what we've gone through since 2020, and just time. People love the idea of what graffiti stands for as an art form, not so much as its negative connotation and vandalism. And so when I get that platform from the iconic George Floyd face, I try to direct people towards — it was an act of street art, the reason why I created it? I'm a graffiti writer, and these are the other things that I do, including my teaching and community activation program SPRAYFiNGER.
