The first half of a two-part mural that was continued at the other end of a police parking lot. The murals were created by American artist James Bullough, who lives and works in Berlin, on the AVA apartment building in NoMa at 55 M Street NE.

Bullough's studio paintings and huge monumentally scaled site-specific murals combine delicately handled realistic portraiture with harsh graphic distortion and abstraction. Inspired by the gritty urban graffiti he saw as a youth growing up in Washington, DC, Bullough harnessed its energy and edge while teaching himself more traditional realistic oil painting techniques by studying the Old Masters. Combining the momentum of the one and the technical precision of the other, his work is about staging compelling contrasts and juxtapositions. Whether working with spray paint on massive facades or oils in his studio, Bullough’s work strikes a delicate balance between realistic portraiture and stylized distortions, straddling the space between traditional and contemporary.

The mural at the base was painted by Ricardo Gonzalez.

Best to view in "Original" because other versions resized by Pbase are decidedly
unsharp.

Good advice, posted earlier: