Moving through our daily lives we may take for granted the beauty that already surrounds us. In Houston, a “driver’s town”, we rush to work, to lunch, and then home again. While zipping through the Houston traffic, we may not have noticed the murals that have been popping up on the Houston landscape.

Mural art is just one kind of street art. Street art is visual art created in public locations, sanctioned or unsanctioned but executed outside the context of traditional art venues. Other types are stencils, stickers, mosaics, and yarn bombing. In the past few years Houston’s mural art scene has been gaining traction. A prime example, the University of Houston hired an international calligraphy artist to paint a mural on the side of the Graduate College of Social Work this past April.

Other than the obvious interest and beauty the art creates, viewing art has other favorable effects.
According to the recent research of Semir Zeki, University of London, the mere viewing of art causes an increase in dopamine and activity in the brain’s frontal cortex, resulting in feelings of pleasure that are similar to being the throws of romantic love. What’s more, positive sensations are almost immediate when viewing an enjoyable or stirring work of art.

You can find murals all around Houston. Below are some murals around town my daughter and I visited on a tour given by Laurie Mills of Houston Mural Tours.