Over 40 years ago, James Marshall carved his first brick mural unknowing he would eventually have 351 large murals across Canada, a few in the United States, one in Japan, and one in England.

The artist grew up in Medicine Hat drawing scenes of the World War he’d heard about and witnessed, painting, and creating commercial artwork for his father’s printing business.

“My mother always said I was drawing on things before I could walk,” says Marshall.

After he worked in the family business for a decade, Marshall was introduced to the artistic side of bricks when he went to work with the international brick plant, IXL Industries Ltd. Marshall would travel to Toronto and the west coast to showcase a variety of bricks IXL offered. He would set up his easel and carve bricks while at exhibitions and convention centres, to show the versatility of the products.

“Doing that gave me the idea that there was something artistic there that could be done. I was already playing with sculpture and pottery, and I saw all this clay making bricks in a big way. I knew I had a new art form,” says the artist.

Explore our James Marshall Mural Tour.‍

At the time he did pen and ink drawings. It was hard to make a living with that, so he started to create more pottery art and eventually installed his first brick mural in 1983 — he was the first artist to create brick murals in Canada.

The murals were always made in Medicine Hat at Marshall’s studio. His winters were full of creating three to five different projects a year — he’d draw the design to scale, build it, carve it, take it apart, dry the pieces, load them into a kiln to fire, and then spend his summers installing them. “Brick murals can last forever.”

Marshall has two new murals that will be installed in Spring 2022 in Medicine Hat. After that, the 84-year-old plans to focus on pen and ink drawings, paintings, and 3D sculpture.

If you’d like to read more about James Marshall, you can find his book, ‘The Art of James Marshall’ at Medalta in the Historic Clay District.