A STORYBOOK painted on walls around Newtown is the plan behind street artist Fintan Magee’s latest work.

Magee was approached by resident Brendan Wilson who led a crowd-funding campaign to pay for the work on a wall in Matt Hogan Reserve.

Mr Wilson said he came up with the idea for Magee to put his stamp on the area after Marrickville Council cleaned up the park which had graffiti sprayed on fences and play equipment.

“I thought it would be really cool to have this huge wall with a mural on it to be the jewel in the crown of the transformation of the park. You can definitely see the increased amount of families in the park and the riff raff has disappeared,” he said.

media_camera Magee’s artwork on Church Street in Newtown. Picture: Damian Shaw media_camera Another piece by the street artist in Townsville.

A letterbox drop to neighbours and the Pozible campaign raised $2000, Mr Wilson said.

“(Fintan) only took $400 home after five and a half days work – it was $1200 for the crane hire and $400 for the paint,” he said.

Magee said it was nice to work on a piece that was brought about by a grassroots community effort.

media_camera Model Brooklyn poses in front of the new City Lane mural by Fintan Magee Photo: Danielle Hansen

Provided he can find the funding, the piece will be one of 10 murals in Newtown that will be part of a larger storybook, he said.

“Each mural will be a page of the book, it will be painted in linear formation and people can do a walk of the neighbourhood and discover each page as you go, so this is the first mural and we’re still waiting on funding so it remains to be seen whether it will happen or it’s a free standing piece,” he said.

“For me a lot of people have been asking me to paint walls in Newtown and having access to so many walls it was a good opportunity to do something with broader context and something never done in public art or muralism before.”

media_camera Fintan Magee's mural at the Tryp Hotel in Fortitude Valley, Brisbane.

Magee was coy about what the story would be about.

“It’s a fictional character who is a traveller who is going to be the main character in the book, besides that I don’t want to reveal too much,” he said.

FINTAN MAGEE

■ Born 1985 in Lismore

■ Began painting full-time

in 2009

■ Has worked in oils and prints, but it is his large-scale wall designs which have earned him global recognition

■ He is currently completing his largest work to date in Berlin on a 14-storey apartment complex