When Mavik is deep into the process of painting a mural, he hits a flow state. A zone where he is fully immersed not just in creating his art, but connected to the world passing around him. “Everything just happens, and you’re part of that happening,” he explains. “Being a creator, in your own world, you can create the most beautiful stuff, experience life at the same time, and still find peace.”

With any mural he’s creating, he pours himself into it completely, usually working up to 17 hours a day. Starting at around 7:30 a.m. and finishing late at night.

“It’s just somewhere that I find peace. Because even though [in Osoyoos] it’s peaceful, when you’re in the city, there’s a lot going on. You see the constant street life, the people suffering, people that are just lost on the streets at night time and you’re part of that; you’re experiencing it while you create a piece of art for them,” says Mavik.

As someone who spent a lot of time in skateparks littered with art, the artist says he always felt a level of attraction to that lifestyle. As he was already a tattoo artist, expanding his practice to do murals was just another form of sharing his work and being heard.

After moving to Osoyoos last year with his family, he brought with him this urge to spread his art. Early summer of this year, Mavik took on his first mural project in the area at the Firehall Brewery in Oliver, colouring the downstairs area of the place with barrels, beer, and hops.

Continuing the momentum, his next project was at the Osoyoos Legion, and then Osoyoos Pioneer Carwash most recently. He’s made some more connections through these projects and is planning on adding more and more colour to town. Next one on the horizon is at the back of Heaven on Earth.

Mavik works hard and fast. Seeing him in front of a wall is a whirlwind for anyone who watched his progress with any of the local murals. From start to finish, the Osoyoos Legion mural took just around one week to complete. Though his process has changed since he’s started doing murals, the energy and care he brings to each wall is constant.

“I love doing murals because you work longer than everybody else, but you get to see people rise and go to sleep while you’re still working. And you see what happens in transitions through the daylight and night,” he says.

The first mural Mavik ever did was at his children’s elementary school in Chilliwack. “It was just like a calling that I accepted,” he says. From there, his work just started to grow. People from the community started reaching out to him and asking him to do murals for their businesses too.

Through this, he met Amber Price who owns the Book Man, a bookshop in Chilliwack, and wanted to accelerate the mural movement in the area. Together they wanted to paint more walls in the city, and eventually have a mural festival. Mavik explains that Price had a lot of connections that helped towards making their ideas into a reality.

Mural festivals are often large scale community events, spanning from a week to several weeks, sometimes where multiple artists work around a community, town, or city to paint murals and connect community members with public art.

“Every artist is there, all doing murals at the same time,” explains Mavik. “It’s like you get a whole walkthrough of people in action, creating art so you could sit with this one artist for 20 minutes and just watch what he does. Then walk 10 minutes down the street and now you’re going to another artist doing the same thing. It just gives that energy of connectivity through people and art.”

Back in Chilliwack, Mavik was part of the effort to bring the mural festival to the city alongside Price, which came to life in the summer of 2020. Though it was put on hold for a while because of COVID-19 restrictions, it came together eventually and became a way for the community to interact with each other and its artists in a safe way.

“A lot of artists were like, ‘we just want something to do,’” recalls Mavik. “It was able to give the artists some cash in their pockets during that time to come and create and put up some art. The goal is to make it kind of like a community-based festival where its people come and experience the art lifestyle.

With booths and food trucks and local artists, it’s a full street festival with pin drops where people can walk through and interact with all the art that’s being created.

When he thinks back to his experience painting the mural for the Osoyoos Legion, Mavik emphasizes how great it was to see the community interact with what he was doing, and show locals in a concrete way what art can do for a community.

The hope, Mavik says, is to build a mural movement locally within the Osoyoos and Oliver communities and eventually have a mural festival here too. He hopes to do more and bring more art and colour to town. “It’s my way to be able to give back and it may be the smallest thing of giving back to the world that I can do, but my goal is to make an impact with it.”