Winter Beauty - Bobcat
2024 Street Wise Mural Festival
Location: South-facing wall of Hyatt Place Boulder/Pearl Street above Zeal Food, 3101 Pearl Pkwy Boulder, CO 80301
Photos by Dona and Niko Laurita, Cam Margera, and Dittlo Digital
Call it kismet - the stars aligned for this mural and Alexandrea Pangburn’s chance to partner with Cats Aren’t Trophies and photographer Thomas D. Mangelson.
The artist completed the largest solo mural of her career during the 2024 Street Wise Mural Festival! Painted in only six days, her mural towers over the viewer, stretching across four stories of the Hyatt Place above Zeal Food. This location is highly visible off of Pearl Parkway, one of Boulder’s main thoroughfares for locals and tourists alike.
Alexandrea paints a realistic yet larger-than-life bobcat who pauses in a snowy landscape. She was lucky to connect with renowned wildlife photographer Thomas D. Mangelson, who gave Alexandrea permission to use one of his bobcat photographs as reference. The bobcat’s green eyes intensely peer out at the viewer, the green standing out from the icy blue landscape and the cat’s white, black, and brown striped fur, expertly rendered by the artist. Behind the wild cat stands the snowy Sangre de Cristo Mountain Range with the rising full moon, pointing to the nocturnal nature of bobcats.
Alexandrea tends to connect with wildlife subject matter more than anything else in her art practice. Each animal’s fur, textures, colors, body shapes, and other attributes come across as elegant yet incredibly purposeful to help them camouflage, hunt, eat, and generally survive in the wild.
For this project, Alexandrea teamed up with Cat Aren’t Trophies, a local nonprofit organization dedicated to stopping the hunting of bobcats and mountain lions in Colorado and the main proponent of Proposition 127. The highly visible wall spot lends itself to spreading the word about Proposition 127, which appears on the upcoming Colorado ballot and would prohibit the hunting and trapping of bobcats and mountain lions in the state.
Alexandrea was honored to partner with and amplify the work and message of Cats Aren’t Trophies and Thomas D. Mangelson for this project. She feels that the opportunity to create public art is a gift and bringing an educational aspect to her murals only allows her art to speak louder. Alexandrea hopes to incorporate more intentional collaborations in her future murals to further educate the public about local wildlife and conservation.
Artist Bio:
Alexandrea Pangburn is a large-scale muralist and animal realism artist currently based in Golden, Colorado. Originally from Lexington, Kentucky and a University of Kentucky alumni (GO BIG BLUE), Alex moved to Colorado in 2017 where she was able to fully immerse herself in her inspiration of the west. Her work brings the beauty of wild to a large scale and her composition helps tie both land and animal together.
Inspired by nature, her realistic style focuses on expressing the details of plants, birds, and animals to bring light to the recognizable physical traits. Her hope is to bring awareness to the local flora and fauna so that we may understand and better educate ourselves on how we can conserve these species.
Alex is also the Executive Director of Babe Walls, her passion project that supports women and non-binary artists in the world of street art.