- November 22, 2024
-
-
Loading
Loading
Tiffany Urquhart sits in front of her octopus mural at a house in Daytona Beach.
Tiffany Urquhart's Philadelphia Eagles' Pride Month mural in the Pepsi Plaza at Lincoln Financial Field is 10 feet tall and 24 feet wide.
One of four walls of Tiffany Urquhart's mural at the Dickerson Center in Daytona Beach
Tiffany Urquhart's 25-foot by 7-foot "Faces of Philly" mural at the Philadelphia International Airport on display from December 2022 through June 2023
Tiffany Urquhart stands in front of her Pride window display at the West Elm furniture store in Philadelphia. She is donating four of the pieces to the Trevor Project. Courtesy photo
Tiffany Urquhart's Pride window display at the West Elm furniture store in Philadelphia
The pandemic gave artist Tiffany Urquhart a chance to spread her wings.
Living in Philadelphia at the time, the Ormond Beach native was making a living as a massage therapist, doing art on the side. When the city shut down, she could no longer do massage, but she could paint. And paint she did. Everywhere.
Plywood was going over doors and buildings and windows, and it was just like a blank canvas.”
— TIFFFANY URQUHART
“Plywood was going over doors and buildings and windows, and it was just like a blank canvas,” Urquhart said. “And Philly’s really good about promoting street art, and a lot of people would just go out and paint things or spray paint or wheatpaste or do some type of art. So I got into it, basically, when COVID happened, and I never stopped.”
Urquhart has become an artist in demand. She is known for her larger-than-life murals and her bright, vibrant colors.
Now, she is also known for two prominent Pride month pieces in her adopted city. She produced a Pride window display for the Philadelphia West Elm furniture store. And she painted the Philadelphia Eagles football team’s “Eagles Wings” mural for Pride month.
The Eagles’ mural is a 10-foot tall by 24-foot wide wall in Lincoln Financial Field’s Pepsi Plaza. Artists are periodically commissioned to paint their own “Eagles Wings” interpretation on the wall.
Team officials were familiar with Urquhart, who had participated in the Eagles’ Gameday Poster series, painting a 24-by-36-inch poster of center Jason Kelce for the game against the Washington Commanders on Nov. 14 last year. The Eagles passed out over 200 posters, and Urquhart signed each one at the game.
The Eagles reached out to her again to paint the Pride month mural. Her mural is full of color, foliage and symbolism.
“Obviously, there’s some synchronicity with the color scheme,” she said. “I incorporated all of the colors of the new updated Pride flag throughout the whole thing, because we’re all one community. It’s all about togetherness and equality.”
There is rainbow foliage throughout, with budding footballs sprouting from the leaves. Philadelphia Eagles wings are featured in the center, with a green background with “Go Birds” written repeatedly in a lighter green. Black X’s and O’s playbook symbols are scattered over the background. But there are more than just Xs and Os.
The mural also features gender symbols — female, male, nonbinary, asexual — mixed in.
The Philadelphia Eagles’ Instagram post on June 1, showing a time-lapse video of Urquhart painting the mural, has generated 51,500 likes and over 2,000 comments — some positive, others negative.
The West Elm display consists of several paintings of concentric circles.
In her artist statement, Urquhart says, “My paintings of layers of circles represent the LGBTQIA+ community and the chosen circles of support that surround us. The circles are a symbol of safety, protection, and community. They represent the love and acceptance that we find within our chosen families and friends.”
She is donating four of the paintings to the Trevor Project, which focuses on suicide prevention efforts for LGBTQ youth.
Urquhart graduated from Seabreeze High School in 2005. She was named the Volusia-Flagler Female Athlete of the Year as a senior. She played soccer and flag football and also ran cross country and track.
She also played soccer for Flagler College in St. Augustine, where she majored in art.
“They tell you, don’t major in art because you’re not going to find a career, but I was so adamant about this being something that I want to do that I never wanted to stop pursuing it,” she said.
Among her other recent works, Urquhart has painted a four-sided mural outside of the Dickerson Community Center in Daytona Beach.
The Dickerson Center is in the final phase of a three-year redesign project, and Urquhart’s tropical mural is a major component, said Brent Cohen, design development product manager for the city of Daytona Beach.
The mural adds some much needed color to the site while also landmarking the Dickerson Center’s main entrance. Our hope is to have her paint more projects around Daytona Beach in the future.”
— BRENT COHEN, Daytona Beach design development project manager
“We saw Tiff’s work on her website and knew her work would help celebrate the idea of a vibrant and active community center by creating a brightly colored four-sided mural near the Dickerson Center’s main entrance,” he said. “The mural adds some much-needed color to the site while also landmarking the Dickerson Center’s main entrance. Our hope is to have her paint more projects around Daytona Beach in the future.”
Urquhart said the Dickerson Center mural was “a super fun one to do, just because there are so many layers and plants and detail and color. I just love working with color.”
Urquhart’s mother, Lisa, said that has always been the case.
“The pictures she colored as a child reflects her artwork today,” Lisa Urquhart said. “Her style has always been a lot of colors.”
The artistic gene runs in the family, Lisa said. Tiffany’s brother, Nicholas, is also an artist. His sea-life artwork will be displayed in Cajun Beach Boil and Sushi, a new Flagler Beach restaurant that is scheduled to open in July.
Urquhart has been living in Atlanta, but she is getting ready to move to New Orleans, where her girlfriend has a job as a nurse. Urquhart plans to continue traveling to Philadelphia monthly “doing murals, visiting and staying part of the community.”
She has painted murals in Atlanta, Florida and West Virginia and expects to be doing some in New Orleans, but the bulk of her work can be found in and around Philadelphia. Her Faces of Philly mural has been displayed in the Philadelphia International Airport since December. Her 45-by-25-foot mural in the area of Temple University incorporates a Medusa head with snakes coming out of its hair.
She has a passion for environmental art, and would like to focus on it more in the future.
“Hopefully I’ll be able to do more in Florida,” she said, “because I do love doing tropical plants and foliage and animals and sea life. So I feel like that obviously fits hand in hand with Florida.”
“I’m just fortunate that I can do this full time,” she added. “I just put in a lot of effort and time and literally never took no for an answer.”
To see more of Urquhart's artwork, go to tiffurquhart.com
