Artist C. Joseph works on his mural, "The Cowboy."
The new mural located outside the Parkside So7 apartment complex near West Seventh Street reflects all that is Fort Worth — named “The Cowboy,” the mural features the outline of Texas with the words "Fort Worth" embedded with a heart. A cowboy and several cows are depicted in bold and vibrant colors, mixing the modern aspects of the growing city with the stockyards roots that are still alive today.
The artist behind it — Christopher Gonzalez, known professionally as C. Joseph — is a local painter and muralist. Selling his first piece at age 19, C. Joseph has 20 years of experience under his belt. The husband and father of two completed his first mural for a friend when he was still in his early 20s.
“I fell in love with the whole concept,” C. Joseph says. “I could do this kind of larger scale stuff and put it on the wall.”
C. Joseph began work on the “The Cowboy” on Jan. 17 and finished it just four days later. He said he wanted the 40-foot-by-14-foot mural to reflect the pride of the community in a way that would make people want to interact with his work.
“What I did was I created something that I think the community can get behind,” C. Joseph says. “I wanted to bring that for someone else to be like, yeah, this is my town, this is the Cowtown, and this is our town.”
To help him work on such a large-scale project, C. Joseph used a technique called the "doodle grid." The doodle grid, also known as the lazy grid, is a process in which the artist draws various designs, triangles, letters, etc. before virtually imposing the final design over the doodles. This provides the artist with multiple reference points, allows for quicker sketching, and helps get the proportions right, especially on bigger projects.
C. Joseph has artwork across the Fort Worth and Dallas area, with murals at facilities for Pepsi, electric vehicle company Canoo, and ice cream and candy shop Hypnotic Emporium. He also has additional work in the lobby area of Parkside So7.
“There's a lot of talent here in the Fort Worth and Dallas area, especially in Fort Worth, that's kind of been underrated. I think a lot of the artists have started to emerge,” C. Joseph says. “It'd be nice to just really focus on helping those artists, and I think Fort Worth is on the move to do that.”
C. Joseph can be found on Instagram @cjosephart or his website, cjosephart.com.
