A ridiculous, wonderful secret runs through a series of Edmonton murals — a sneaky act of subtle subterfuge that connects public art across the city like an invisible thread. That hidden and unexpected gem: Conan the Barbarian.

“Nobody besides my friends and family knows about this,” laughs muralist Kris Friesen upon being discovered, “so this is quite hilarious and awesome.

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“That’s just fine. It’s time.”

Whether the pulp-fiction warrior-thief is chowing down on a wall in Chinatown, hoisting a severed head atop a wave-pummelled island or looking particularly bored in the crowd on the side of a curling club, the puncher of camels is reliably in nearly every Friesen mural — in effect the Where’s Waldo of Edmonton. He also shows up in other Friesen paintings across Western Canada, for at least 30 appearances in total.

Photo by Fish Griwkowsky / Postmedia

Friesen, born in Chilliwack, B.C., and currently living in Duncan on Vancouver Island, lived in Edmonton for about 10 years starting in 2005. And it’s here he continues to do most of his work, with a couple dozen walls in the city and more coming.

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“The very first one in Edmonton was on Popular Bakery around 2009. The earlier ones I enjoy less,” he laughs. “Nothing like a mural on a wall to go, ‘Oh, I hope I’m better now.’”

Most of Friesen’s work is now done on panels, then shipped — though many have been painted right onto cinder-block walls, dozens across Western Canada, including in St. Albert, Whitecourt and Calgary.

The themes range around almost any concept of identity. “That’s what I love the most about my job — I cannot predict the subject matter.

“Last year I did a series of seven military murals, from the Boer War to modern times. From that I did the most recent Chinatown mural, a take on a really famous scroll.

Individual murals typically take about one month — though the wraparound on a structure in Kitchener Park took most of a winter. As Friesen shivered in his plastic-wrapped temporary studio, he placed Conan standing in a warm outdoor pool, getting splashed by a skinny guy with a moustache.

“Two seconds later,” says the artist, “that scene might look a little different.”

“I’ve always loved Conan the Barbarian. I was kind of raised on him, which didn’t always work out as swords aren’t a great way to deal with your problems.”

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The idea of sneaking in barbarians started on 95 Street with his Hope Hunter Mural. “I realized I can put things in and probably no one would notice. I thought, ‘I should put in Conan!’ He’s literally 20 feet in the air, you’d have to get binoculars to see him.”

Sure enough, way up, a certain longhair is looking out a window at the action below.

“After that I was like, ‘Should I keep doing this? What if somebody finds out?’”

He laughs, and pauses. “Well, OK, what if somebody does find out? What are they going to do?” So he just kind of carried on.

Friesen doesn’t always throw the sword and sorcery anti-hero into his paintings — I once spent 20 minutes trying to find him in an underwater landscape along the LRT tracks.

“Sorry,” he said. “I enjoyed that one so much that I forgot to put him in!”

But in general, if Friesen’s jagged signature is on a painting, so is the Cimmerian slayer of sorcerers in any number of roles.

Besides the battlefield Conan, he’s terrorizing CFL players in a sportscasters mural, hanging out in cosmopolitan Greece, and, on the side of a rink in Beverly Heights, shovelling the snow with a battleaxe.

Photo by Fish Griwkowsky / Postmedia

But these aren’t the only liberties Friesen has taken. At one point in John Milius’ 1982 film, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Conan is asked by a fur-wearing general, ‘What is best in life?’

The tower of muscle replies: “Crush your enemies. See them driven before you. And hear the lamentations of their women.”

Friesen has eased the warrior-thief into the 21st century, though, on his Famous Five Mural at 10027 102 St. “It’s time Conan became respectful of women,” Friesen says. “So he’s in a rally for women’s rights!”

The artist notes, “The modern Conan has come a long way.”