Cobourg Police are now investigating after a mural was damaged by paint over the weekend.
As first reported by Today’s Northumberland sometime overnight Saturday or Sunday morning a can of paint was thrown on a popular mural in Henley Arcade on King Street across from Victoria Hall in Cobourg.
The mural was unveiled in October 2015 and the work was commissioned by artist Heather Cooper at a cost of $38,250.
Today’s Northumberland was notified of the vandalism on Sunday evening, but police apparently weren’t notified until Monday.
The artist was across the road with her grandson on Monday, June 4, 2018 when she noticed Cobourg Police photographing her mural.
“It was just a fluke – so we came by to see what was going on,” said Cooper.
“It just blew my mind. It numbed me.”
After the shock set in looking at the artwork that took her months to conceive and paint, “then you have to figure out what the hell to do about it.”
Starting at approximately 3 p.m. with her husband and later her grandson arrived the three worked into the evening delicately trying to remove the orange paint from the mural.
Town staff will be pressure washing the sidewalk to remove the paint.
“It’s desperate work because right now the paint hasn’t cured.”
“It hasn’t dried 100%. Give latex a couple of more days and you’ll never get it off in a million years.”
As the three people worked almost every person that walked through Henley Arcade gave them encouragement to keep going and to say how disgusted they were that something like this would happen to such beautiful artwork.
“We’re hoping that it’s semi-cured and we can keep on working.”
Cooper added her husband Terry has more “brute force” then her so he’s handled the harder parts of the job.
Cooper said it’s hard work, but they have to be extremely careful not to damage the artwork.
“We’ve got seven layers of urethane on top of the paint just for this reason.”
The artist said she wouldn’t have been surprised if someone had tagged the mural with a marker, but she never thought something like this would happen.
The owners of Benjamin Moore Paints a few doors away were extremely helpful with ideas for removing the orange paint along with offering items such as buckets and brushes.
Author: Pete Fisher
Has been a photojournalist for over 30-years and have been honoured to win numerous awards for photography and writing over the years. Best selling author for the book Highway of Heroes - True Patriot Love
