San Diego's mural maestro, Hanna Daly

Hanna Daly is putting finishing touches on the larger-than-life dancing lady she has painted, freehand, on the alley-side wall of a dance studio in Coronado. It’s the kind of mural Daly can knock off on a, uh, daily basis. She’s used to working fast, thinking on her feet. “Typically, we might have a little conference in the morning, the owners and I, to make sure we’re on the same page,” she explains. “Maybe a sketch or two, but nothing more. When I start on a wall, I often have no idea what’s going to appear. I like to be as spontaneous as I can.”

Daly the muralist can’t keep up with the orders and requests she receives: her career has grown right alongside the spectacular expansion of mural art as an accepted part of San Diego’s cityscape. It helps that she’s a veteran of the scene. “I’ve been painting murals for 19 years now, so over time I’ve gotten really good at laying stuff out on a really big surface,” she says. “Yes, I just free-handed the dancer. She’s probably about 9 or 10 feet tall. It wasn’t that hard, really. Most of it is just eyeballing.” 

She says murals are busting out all over — not only here, but around the world. “I started doing this in 2004 in San Diego, one of maybe four muralists in town. People didn’t even know what murals were. Plus, business owners were afraid of putting public art on their businesses. They didn’t want to offend, they didn’t want it to be too colorful. They didn’t want to draw attention. And they were afraid of getting graffitied. But nowadays, people are embracing art more. Every business wants a mural now. And honestly, this mural art ends up deterring graffiti artists. I have painted thousands of murals around San Diego, 50 in schools, and only three have been attacked over the years.”

Hanna at work on one of her most popular subjects, the owl.

In all, she says, she paints almost 100 murals a year. “I am quick. The dance studio mural has taken me one day. I get maybe $1250 per one-day mural.” She learned to be speedy because she had small children. “I worked maybe two days a week. But I’m super busy now. I feel super lucky to have this job, because I love being able to see the fruits of my labor.”

The amazing thing is, she has never had an art lesson in her life. “I did go to school, UC Santa Barbara — but not to get an art degree, because I thought I wouldn’t be able to get a job in art.” She laughs. “Instead, I got a linguistics degree and studied Spanish and French, but ended up not really using that. Whereas I can work every single day of the week at my art, and I could work twice as much if I needed to. And yet art-wise, I’m all self-taught.” 

At 42, she’s fit and young, but admits that painting on a ladder or a scissor lift for eight hours a day is difficult. “It’s very physically taxing. My shoulders are always quite sore. I’m an open-water swimmer, so that helps. But that’s why I’m thinking someday I’ll just do canvases, like Diego Rivera.”