When the family barn needed painting, DeAnna Mandler didn’t want to go with farmyard red.

Instead, she decided to paint a mural based on her family’s experiences. In one corner there’s a ranch inspired by their farm and several horses. In another, there’s a mountain scene inspired by trips to Colorado, French Creek in the Black Hills and more.

“The theme is probably me looking back at what we’ve done in our lives,” she said.

In August, Mandler started painting this idea in a mural on the barn: It will include mountains with elk, deer, a cottage and waterfalls; a ranch scene with horses; a beach with hippos and water lilies; a farm yard and more.

The project started a bit by accident. Mandlers’s granddaughter, Allie Mae, now 4 years old, often wants to paint. One day, she carried a gallon of paint into her grandmother’s house, dropped it and the lid came off, spilling blue paint all over the entryway. Finally, Mandler told her granddaughter to go paint the barn.

That evolved into a project where Mandler painted an autumn mural that she wants to have vibrant and bright, with reds, oranges and yellows. A fall scene was the obvious choice for the colors.

“That’s why I like fall: It’s the yellow ocher, it’s the burnt umber,” she said. “Everything’s vibrant in the fall, everything’s crisp.”

She bought 20 gallons of mismatched, exterior latex paint at Austin’s Sherwin-Williams.

Out this week
This story appears in the January-February edition of Austin Living

She estimated she got about halfway before winter hit and she won’t start again until the spring thaw. So far, Mandler has spent more time scraping the old paint off the barn than actually painting it.

The project hasn’t come without delays. A few weeks after Mandler started, her daughter announced she was engaged and that she wanted to get married in a few months. Then in September, hail damaged several buildings in the Brownsdale area, including the Mandler barn and their house. It took gouges out of the house — and her mural — so now they’re residing the house. Mandler had to touch up her work before early wintry weather put the project on hold in the fall. Now, she’ll have to wait until next fall to finish the mural.

Mandler has painted before, but she’s never taken on a project this large. She originally wanted to go to art school, but her dad told her artists starve, so she could go be a nurse. Then she could then take art classes.

Now, Mandler is a home healthcare nurse in the area after 20 years at the St. Mary’s pediatrics intensive care unit. She took several years off to be a stay-at-home mom.

At 30, she took her first art class through Austin Community Education from Lois Rolfson.

She often painted backgrounds for plays and church pageants her children were in. She’s also painted long “lumberjack” saws, a wall in her mother’s basement, and 10 life-sized cows for her brother.

“I’ve enjoyed painting lifesize things,” she said.

On one hand, the barn project has been something to do with her grandchildren and friends. She plans to paint each of her 10 grandchildren somewhere on the barn, and they’re often ready to help or talk about the project; however, they only last for about 30 minutes at a time.

Her husband, Mark, put scaffolding up, which the grandchildren have enjoyed.

“They have loved climbing the scaffolding,” she said.

Mandler’s sister came to visit and voiced her worry that she’d ruin Mandler’s mural.

“She goes, ‘I don’t want to mess it up,’” Mandler said. “I go, you can’t mess it up, Susan. It’s just paint. If I don’t like what you do, I just paint over it.”

She’s even had friends and neighbors stop by to help out.

“I have invited whoever comes in the yard to stop, take a minute and paint with me,” she said.

But painting the barn isn’t just a social activity. Mandler and Mark are active members of Bethlehem Free Church, and the act of painting can be a spiritual time for Mandler.

Since she’s never painted something of this magnitude, Mandler said she’ll commonly pray for guidance, along with asking for whatever it takes to keep the project fun and not feeling like work.

“It’s kind of like my therapy, my prayer time too,” she said.

Mandler hopes to continue painting the barn next year, and she plans to paint each side. She then plans to paint the other buildings on the property.

She may not stop there. Drivers can’t see her barn from the road, so she said she’s toyed with asking a man on Highway 56 if she could paint his barn, even though she doesn’t know him.

Jason Schoonover can be reached at jason.schoonover@austindailyherald.com