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Michelle Black, owner of A Color Affair, recently started her second mural painting in the city of Greenville.

Greenville is celebrating its historic roots with several community projects and local merchants funded this latest one through the “Love Local” campaign, sponsored by the Greenville Area Chamber of Commerce (GACOC).

As part of the campaign, citizens bought raffle tickets for a chance to win one of three beautiful baskets on Valentine’s Day.

GACOC Executive Director Tracy Salter said the Chamber is thrilled to help facilitate these beautiful works of our art in our community. 

“Murals and other arts initiatives encourage a sense of excitement among citizens and promote reinvestment into the community,” Salter said. “The murals that are displayed truly brighten and beautify our downtown district.”

Black has painted murals since 2008. She and her husband bought a house in Atlanta, where they lived at the time, and while there, she decided to paint her son’s bedroom. 

“My 10 year old son wanted a soccer ball on his wall with his name on it and begged me to paint it for him,” Black said. “I painted my son’s wall with his name really big and added not just a soccer ball, but a football, basketball and baseball, too. After many experiments and errors later, he had a custom artwork piece, a mural to be exact.”

Although she doesn’t have any formal training as a muralist, Black said artistic talent runs in her family. 

“My grandmother, mother, son, daughter, brother, sister, and myself, we’re all blessed,” Black said.

Black gained her skill by hands-on, trial and error projects. When she finished painting her son’s room, her husband Danny encouraged her to take a picture and put it on Facebook and Craigslist.com for a mural ad.

“So, I did [post the picture] and the first call I got was Zoo Atlanta, because we were living in Georgia,” Black said. “I did nine murals for them.”

Danny continues to be supportive and encouraging of her career, Black explained.

“My first [creative] love will always be sketching but painting is a very close second,” Black said. “My favorite kind of artwork has been and always will be creating something out of nothing, which in my eyes, is just about anything.”

When she first started painting murals, Black was working full time as a sales rep for a local company, she said. She worked vacations, holidays, weekends, every single day she could spare to get her business going.

It was a huge risk, Black recalled, but in 2010 Black resigned her sales job and started working her mural business full time.

She and her family moved to Butler County in 2019, when her husband took a job in Greenville. Black began painting murals around Greenville after the move.

One of her more popular murals is in Georgiana.

“It’s the one with the angel wings,” Black said. “You can stand in front of it and someone can take your picture.”

With the addition of the newest mural in historic downtown Greenville, locals and visitors alike can stand in front of the mural at the Greenville Hardware store, formerly Dunklin Hardware in years past, and take a selfie to share with the world.