Meet Nyla Lee: The street artist who created the Phoenix mural you pass every day
Elizabeth Montgomery
If you’ve ever suffered through traffic on Seventh Street in Phoenix to get on Interstate 10, you may have seen the mural on the wall of a smoke shop.
It features hues of blue and pink surrounding the caramel-colored skin of a woman front and center.
The piece belongs to Nyla Lee, 21, who is rocking the art scene of Phoenix one gigantic mural at a time.
“The inspiration was to do something that was radiant, vibrant and beautiful. There’s not really much on the street that expresses and speaks that,” Lee said.
The 20-foot by 20-foot project took seven hours to finish and was done completely freehand with the help of Philadelphia artist Alloyius Mcilwaine.
"I kind of Photoshopped it in my head in a way and I mix and match colors," Lee said. "A lot of it is kind of just freestyle, throwing things together and seeing what works."
Inspired by photos she saw online Lee imagined an image that fit her vision, changing facial features and hues while she spray-painted on the wall.
“It was mostly to show the beauty of female self. Female beauty and all of its love and form and positivity,” Lee said.
The Las Vegas native is a self-taught artist who just began spray painting street art a year ago.
Lee has been sketching for as long as she can remember but a friend recently inspired her to substitute the comfort of private sketchpad graphite drawings for spray painted public murals.
“He basically was just handing me cans, he said ‘you can draw a face, you can do it with spray cans too.’ So I was like ‘ok’ now I love doing it,” Lee said.
Without any professional teachings, Lee credits Unexpected Art Gallery downtown for giving her the space to hone her craft. Her childhood dream has been to become a working artist and she’s on her way there --a dozen of her murals pepper Phoenix streets and she has more in the works.
“I want this to be a career, I want to be able to make art my full-time job,” Lee said. “I’m still figuring it out but for now, for the time being, I love doing it and that’s why I do it.”
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