“My name is Kalkidan Assefa. I paint under the name Drippin Soul. I’m a mural artist, a visual artist, and street artist based in Ottawa.
A lot of my work, especially in Centretown, is focused on community, on representation, and kind of on showing the vibrancy of this particular neighbourhood.
I start with the doodle grid. So this is just the way that I would scale out my drawing, basically. So it’s just reference points. But in terms of the inspiration behind this particular piece, it’s the creativity and the vibrancy of Centretown and all the creative industries here.
I got into murals kind of inadvertently. I was an art student, so I did murals as part of my graduation piece. And then later, many years later, I started painting in the streets in support of different social movements and whatnot. And that kind of was my entry point into larger commercial mural practice. I did my first mural in 2001. So that’s more hours than I can count.
I didn’t really have a mentor. There weren’t that many people mentoring when I was coming up in the mural game. But nowadays, I like being able to mentor younger artists.
I do mentorship kind of indirectly through my projects because I like to hire young artists to be my assistants… youth artists… which I’ve done in Ottawa, Toronto, Waterloo now, Halifax. I also work with different organizations that work with the community. So whether it’s Urban Art Collective or other groups.
My advice to young muralists would be to find somebody experienced and try to learn from them as much as you can, and also put the time and work in on your own work just to get your walls up.
Being reliable is critical because a lot of this is commitment and being able to demonstrate that you’re committed. A lot of people come from the painting-in-the-streets world, and when you’re doing murals, especially large projects like this, you have to be a hundred percent professional.
I think Centretown has their own particular colors that they have in a lot of their branding and marketing, which I think work really well together and I’ve used in the past. Personally, I tend to do palettes of strong complementary colors… a lot of blues and oranges or that kind of thing. I like to push a lot of the pinks and the teals and things like that.
I painted my first mural in 2001. I started my professional mural practice in 2015. So I hope, you know, within the coming future… I’ve painted across Canada, I’d like to take it internationally and paint in other countries as well.”
Kalkidan Assefa
Muralist / Visual Artist / Mentor
@drippin_soul
Photos and Interview by @_finn
