Downtown Austin
Downtown Austin's rapid vertical growth has created a new generation of mural surfaces — the blank concrete bases of glass towers and the surviving low-rise walls beside them carry a dense concentration of large-format work that ranges from corporate commission to genuine street art. The 6th Street entertainment corridor, the Rainey Street bar district, and the Red River cultural zone each have distinct mural identities that reflect who those streets are for and who the artists are painting them for.
Featured Artists
All artists →Kerry Awn
Austin's original downtown muralist, Kerry Awn has been painting the city's musical heritage onto its walls since the 1970s. "Austin Music" on Red River Street was painted in 1985 — a documentation of the city's live music ecosystem before it became an international brand, showing the venues, the musicians, and the audiences that made Red River the live music capital of Texas before anyone was calling Austin the Live Music Capital of the World.
Raul Gonzalez III
Austin-born Chicano artist whose work centers the African American and Latino roots of Texas music. "Texas Flood" is a tribute to Stevie Ray Vaughan — not the iconic bronze statue on Town Lake, but the musician in his element on a Rainey Street stage, rendered in blues and amber with the energy of a live performance rather than a memorial. Gonzalez insisted on painting Vaughan playing rather than posing.
Federico Archuleta
"The Capitol Steps" depicts the Texas State Capitol from the perspective of protesters — specifically the farmworkers who marched 490 miles from the Rio Grande Valley to Austin in 1966 demanding labor protections, arriving on the Capitol steps to be turned away by the governor. The mural renders that arrival in the warm gold of late afternoon, the marchers' faces painted from archival photographs with unflinching specificity.