Whale mural at Lake Barrington business is artist Eddaviel’s statement on the environment

He offers his take on the huge creatures in vibrant detail in a mural showing two whales amid swirling waters that he painted at a Lake Barrington business that sells water-purification systems.

“I love whales,” says Eddaviel, whose real name is Edison Montero and who spends part of each year in his home country and the rest in Fox River Grove not far from Lake Barrington. “They are beautiful.”

In the mural, he says “you have a whale in the night with a moon” and “a whale with the sun.”

www.eddaviel.com

The imagery of blue whales and blue waters melds at one point into a sort of infinity symbol.

Eddaviel describes the painting as “an exploration of the duality of life, the day and night, how everything is connected, explore the water and how life is connected to water, how we are water.”

Andrew Wilson, owner of the water-purification business, Angel Water, says he’s from a family of artists — a sister, his daughter, his late mother — and wanted something colorful on the textured cinderblock walls of his business.

And he says he wanted it to be a statement on the importance of water, the environment and how polluting plastic water bottles are.

Wilson told his grown daughter what he was thinking. She told him, “I’ve got the right guy.”

A friend of hers was dating Eddaviel, who painted the mural in 2019.

Click on the map below for a selection of Chicago-area murals