RGV Muralist Creates “Epic” Art

by Ric Cavazos

The 20-foot-high mural in downtown Mercedes that’s located on West 3rd Street will make you slow down to take a better look.

It’s a Western-style mural featuring cowboys on horseback riding with a fury in pursuit of a fleeing black bull. There’s dust flying in the background as the vaqueros ride hard with lassos over their heads, giving chase to a fearsome animal. The mural was completed during Thanksgiving week and is the work of Harlingen-based artist Leo Rivera. He has done murals for cities and businesses across the Rio Grande Valley, and the Mercedes project represents Rivera’s largest work in the region thus far.

“This is my first time painting cowboys and horses,” Rivera said. “It was super fun and interesting. I tried to make it fun to paint and then hoped what would be in this space would be epic.”

Rivera has also done downtown murals in his hometown, including his alluring “blue lady” that can be found amidst other murals on North A Street in Harlingen. He has two more upcoming projects to complete in Mercedes and hopes more will follow.

“I want to be that guy to do more work for cities in the Valley,” he said.

Finding Common Ground

Rivera started drawing at an early age, discovering his artistic talents.

He left the Rio Grande Valley in 2009 after graduating from Harlingen High School to get his art training and education at a Denver-area design school. While in Colorado, Rivera began doing mural work and graduated with an undergraduate degree in studio fine art from the Rocky Mountain College of Art & Design.

It was in Denver where Rivera painted the largest wall mural of his career to date, and it gave him the confidence to successfully navigate large-scale projects. Returning to the Valley in 2020, he set off to work as what he describes as an “artist for hire.” As such, he has done mural work for restaurants, barber and tire shops, fitness gyms, and a variety of other businesses across the Valley.

Rivera’s personal preferences in art favor pop culture and themes derived from European and historical art. He realizes that—when working for clients–his commissioned art needs to highlight the mission and purpose of a business or the historical elements cities are seeking in reflecting their communities.

“There’s always some back and forth in trying to find the right concept,” Rivera said. “At the end of the day, you want them to like what’s going to be on their space. You work to get to some common ground.”

Getting to Something Good

The towering mural he did in Mercedes is representative of how the artist works with a client to get to the goals sought in a commissioned art project.

City leaders in Mercedes wanted a mural that reflected the Mid-Valley community’s history of agriculture and its signature livestock show that attracts large crowds every March. The give and take with Mercedes leaders included a first draft on paper that wasn’t what his clients were seeking.

“I fumbled the first sketch,” Rivera said.

It wasn’t really a setback because clients rarely like the first draft presented, which the artist says is understandable. Rivera went back to his reference materials of photographs of Western imagery and collaged them into a digital sketch. The winning sketch, which borrowed images from different photos, is the one he would paint on 3rd Street in downtown Mercedes.

The cowboys-and-bull mural took 11 days to complete, with most of the work done via spray-paint art with key background colors done by brush. Rivera says he made the mural “my own” from an artistic standpoint by using different background colors from the reference photos to create something unique to Mercedes and the Valley. He praised the city for its support and encouragement, which included providing Rivera with a lift to give him the elevation he needed to finish the 20-foot-tall artistic creation.

Rivera took a long look up at the Western-themed mural and smiled with pride for a job well done and with satisfaction for providing clients what they were seeking.

“I think it’s fitting for the culture of the city,” he said. “The theme was fiesta. We all know the (Rio Grande Valley) livestock show is what Mercedes is known for. We fleshed out the idea to get to something that represents the city’s culture.”