• Max Richards and Frank Morris on the scissor lift. Photos by Betty Richards

FREMANTLE artist Trevor Richards and his team are hastily putting the finishing touches to a series of giant murals at Fiona Stanley Hospital.

Richards won the commission Christmas Eve and hastily assembled a team of seven artists to paint six murals in the hospital’s cancer care wing.

Most of the walls are in patient lounges and waiting areas, including one monster wall in a stairwell that is 11 metres high by 12 metres wide.

“It is the biggest mural I’ve ever worked on and we needed to use a scissor lift,” says Richards.

“I’ve gone for a tessellated pattern and employed soft, soothing colours.

“The pattern shifts depending on which way you look at it—it’s like the geometric floor patterns you see in old European churches.”

Richards, 60, is a veteran Freo artist renowned for his minimalist paintings.

Over the past decade he has shown work extensively in Europe.

He plans to have the murals finished by next Friday.

by STEPHEN POLLOCK