PORT ANGELES — When Larry White was approached to paint a mural downtown, he said he immediately knew what he wanted to do.
White’s new mural — installed Sunday on the east side of BarHop — features an orca jumping from the waves.
“When Sam (Grello) said he wanted a mural in downtown Port Angeles, it’s just what first popped into my head,” White said. “I’ve done many paintings of orcas, and they’re fun, they’re flowy, they’ve got just a good feeling to them. I knew exactly what needed to be on that wall. I just thought, ‘Put an orca in there.’ I know it’s a railroad area and the train is cool, but it needed some life.”
White first sketched out his idea and then began painting the mural downtown on Dec. 5, he said. It was finished about Dec. 23 and took him between 40 and 50 hours in total.
“It wasn’t that bad, actually,” White said.
The mural, which White has decided to title “The Release,” is a kind of release of his mental state while painting it, he said.
“I’ve been doing art for about 38 years. Obviously, the younger years were just scribbles and whatnot, drawing on the desks at school and what have you, but 2025 was the breaking point where I needed to pursue life as an artist instead of life as working to be able to do art,” White said.
He is a full-time artist, he said, after quitting all of his jobs in order to do the mural.
“It was kind of like a release of my stresses,” he said.
White painted the mural as the third mural for the West by Northwest Mural Initiative for the Port Angeles Waterfront District. Executive Director Sam Grello asked White to paint the mural, which replaced an old Norman Mural by Tim Quinn.
Quinn’s mural was up for about 30 years, Grello said, but in recent years, two of the panels had fallen off and the mural was beyond repair.
“Larry White is a downtown staple,” Grello wrote in an email. “His art can be found hanging in shops like BarHop, The Rail and Sound Community Bank.”
The Waterfront District struggled to get these murals done, Grello said.
“Part of the reason that it was difficult for me to get the murals done was property owners. Murals are very expensive,” he said. “The Normal Mural cost about $20,000 over 30 years ago. We were able to get these three murals done for about $5,000 each, but the only way we were able to get the murals done for so little was because we gave the artists artistic freedom to paint what they wanted (with a few parameters, like no politics or sex).”
Giving artistic freedom made the murals a bit of a hard pitch for building owners in this first iteration of the West by Northwest Mural Initiative, Grello said.
“Hopefully, now that we have three murals up, other building owners will start to buy in to the idea of getting a cheap mural up on their property,” Grello said. “Building owners had to pay the Waterfront District a mere $500 as an installation fee. That’s one heck of a deal.”
The Waterfront District owns the murals, Grello said.
The process to create this mural was a fun one, White said.
“I drew it out, which is the normal process for me,” he said. “I draw it, scribble it, and figure out where I want to go on it. I kind of overbought on paint because I’m horrible about that, it’s a difficult choice. I used as much of the paint as I could to not only coat the panels but also to kind of let the paint flow and feel where it was going to take the piece. That’s where we came up with what happened there, the paint did it.”
The viewpoint for the mural, White said, is from the Dungeness Spit, from where he said he’s seen orcas swimming, though not jumping from the water as shown in the painting.
“It’s a classic Pacific Northwest theme,” White said.
For more information about White, or to see more of his art, go to larrywhite.art.
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Reporter Emily Hanson can be reached by email at emily.hanson@peninsuladailynews.com.
