SAN ANTONIO – Whenever Catalina Zamarripa picks up a paintbrush, she expects most people to look right through her art work.
Most of what she paints are decorations on the windows of businesses all across San Antonio.
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It’s a way that the recent graduate of the Maryland Institute College of Art came up with to earn money and continue refining her talents.
“Windows are great. It’s great money, but I want to pursue something a little bigger for myself,” she said.
What the San Antonio native has in mind actually is a lot bigger.
She dreams of painting murals on walls all over the Alamo City.
Zamarripa first discovered this passion as a child when she would paint under the guidance of an uncle who is a muralist.
Recently, she got a chance to try her hand at it on her own.
She painted giant pictures of fruit on the outside of a produce business, and a zig zag design on the outer walls of another shop.
The experience, she says, was both rewarding and full of new challenges.
“Painting a mural is--you can’t scrape it off. If you mess up, you’ve got to paint over it,” she said, laughing. “With a window you can just, scoop with a little razor.”
Those walls paintings, she hopes, are just the first of many to come.
Zamarripa currently is working to make in-roads into San Antonio’s growing mural painting community.
“I know that I’m in a city that will provide me work and will support me in everything that I do,” she said.
For the time being, she will continue painting windows until she is able to open a door to success.