Muralist With a Mission

Her gold charm bracelet jingles as she slaps high fives to the students who gather as she paints her wild, bright mural on their school wall.

“Free hugs!” she shouts, and the kids stampede to her, wrapping their arms around this petite, vibrant woman dressed in an orange-and-fuchsia flowered frock.

She is Anna Parris. And she is artist extraordinaire.

For the next few weeks, Parris will be completing her second free community mural, this one painted on an outside brick wall at University Elementary School in central Thousand Oaks.

Titled “The Peace Train,” the mural depicts boys and girls of all races with boxy, pointed, Picasso-esque features riding a colorful locomotive under the shade of banana trees, her trademark design.

The 43-year-old Parris, who has lived in Thousand Oaks for four years, is on a dual mission.

One is to share her creations with the world by giving back to the community, especially to the young people.

The other is to kick-start her professional future, featuring her own brand of urban art, which she dubs, “Beyond Cubism.”

“My life has finally come together,” she says, eyeing the porous wall of the school, her newest canvas. “I’ve struggled, but now I’m totally happy. I wanted to share it. . . . And who better than with the kids?”

After a lifetime of painting and three years of perfecting her modern style, Parris said she recently sat down and told her husband she was ready to show her art to the world.

“He said he wasn’t going to just let me give up on this idea,” Parris said. “And he typed up a letter to send to the schools.”

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She decided to donate murals to seven elementary schools in the Conejo Valley Unified School District on a first-come, first-served basis. Although she supplies the visual masterpieces, the schools must supply a couple of hundred dollars for materials.

She completed her first mural, which features a purple-streaked panther, at Park Oaks Elementary School earlier in November. Maple, Aspen, Conejo, Wildwood and Meadows elementary schools have signed on to receive Parris pieces, too.

But painting at the University school has special meaning for Parris, because that is where one of her eight grandchildren, Shelby Parris, goes to kindergarten.

As Parris paints through the school day, children swarm around to watch her work. Although she has been at the school barely two weeks, she seems like a permanent fixture. She stops to show one sixth-grader her new sandals and lets two other children rub their hands through her newly buzzed haircut.

As his wife messes around with brushes and paint, John Parris helps whenever he can, painting the backgrounds and lugging cans from the car to the school.

“I’m the mule,” joked the Los Angeles County firefighter before being sent off to fetch his wife’s portfolio.

Anna Parris has been painting since she was 5 years old, when she lived in Whittier with her family, two sisters and brother.

She said her parents never really understood the “art thing,” but allowed her to take any class she wanted.

She did.

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Ceramics. Weaving. Watercolor. Oils. Acrylics.

She married when she was 21, but her husband died of Hodgkin’s disease in 1978. She was left to raise her daughter and stepson on her own.

“His death kind of set me back,” she said. “I had to go back to work because now I was a widow.”

As she worked at several high-level secretarial jobs and served as the director of human services for a business in Oregon, Parris continued to paint--stashing away an extra few hundred dollars a month--”Christmas money”--from the artwork she sold at festivals and fairs.

One evening about four years ago, she was having dinner in a restaurant with her stepson when one of John Parris’ sons approached her.

“Can I introduce you to my father?” Parris recalls him asking. “He’s never looked at someone like the way he’s looking at you.”

About a year later, the two were married. Between the two of them, they have six children and eight grandchildren.

The couple’s financial security allows Parris to play around a little with her art, she said.

“I’d paint anyway, whether I get paid or not,” she said.

But, she admits, she’d like to get paid.

She is hoping that her murals, her recent art show at Borders Books and a free display of painted guitars in the windows of Instrumental Music Co. in Thousand Oaks will win her some recognition. She also said she is looking for an agent to represent her work.

“I guess my ideal goal is to be carried by one or two upscale galleries and do six great paintings a year,” she said.

As long as she is dreaming, she added, “I’d also like to live by the beach, live a quiet and eclectic life and go most everywhere in silk pajamas.”

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While painting for herself is important, Parris is also serious about teaching others.

After each mural she completes, which usually takes a month, she offers a free art lesson to the students at the school.

Park Oaks teacher Sue Peelle said Parris’ lesson likely will have a lasting effect on the children.

“On the first day, their artwork was a bit timid,” Peelle said. “But after Parris taught them, they used more color. . . . I could begin to see their personalities.”

Peelle said her students refuse to erase a fading chalk drawing that Parris drew several weeks ago.

“They want something to remember her by,” Peelle said.