Woman pays tribute to David Bowie with mural in Phoenix

PHOENIX (KSAZ) - If you're driving down Seventh Street and Granada, this mural is hard to miss.

"One on the left side of the face is left hand profile and then they are going to gradually turn around to the right so you see some sort of movement," Maggie Keane said.

This mural of David Bowie began mid-May by artist Maggie Keane. She was asked to paint the while a while ago but couldn't come up with what should go here.

"Should I put several different pictures or just one big picture?" she asked. "I wasn't sure what to do with it, but then when David Bowie passed away it just jumped in my mind. I have to do a tribute to David Bowie."

Keane used to paint billboards, but now she's spent her last eight Saturdays creating this tribute.

"I just get a picture and I project it up there like we did in the billboard trade and sketch it in and paint it in and they're fairly individually compact and it would take about one day to do one head," she said.

Keane has two more paintings to finish before the wall is complete and so far, the reaction is overwhelmingly positive.

"The come and visit me and they just thank me, people drive by and yell, 'Thank you!' and if they come and visit they'll spend some time and talk to me about what he meant to them, and it's just been a extremely awarding experience," she said.

Keane says she hopes to finish the mural in about two weeks.

By the way, if Keane's name sounds familiar, it's probably because you've seen some her other work on FOX 10. She's also a court sketch artist and has covered some big federal trials, including Sheriff Joe Arpaio and Jared Loughner.