A formerly dreary and underused room in Whakatāne’s Hato Hone St John building has a new lease of life thanks to a mural painted by Jinan Dodd.

The mural depicts local islands Moutohorā and Whakaari, manu (birds) tieke, kereru and tui, and Rā (the sun) as a kaitiaki, painted with a mixture of traditional and spray-painting techniques.

It was unveiled at a small ceremony on Tuesday evening attended by Dodd, his friends, former art teachers and St John staff.

Paramedic and Whakatāne Area Committee member Chrissie Nairn said the St John building was a milk bottling plant previously and due to its former life, it was full of big spaces that needed some love.

The massive room that now hosts Dodd’s mural was once covered with red-flecked ceramic tiles that St John staff painted white to be a blank canvas.

Ms Nairn said the aim was to bring some colour and life back to the space, but they were not sure exactly how to do it until Dodd posted on Facebook looking to paint a mural.

He now lives in Perth, Australia, but he was back in Whakatāne for the holiday period.

“We thought it would be a great way to breathe some life into an underused space.”

She said the area committee was rapt with the final product.

They planned to use the space for staff to hang out in and for the community to be able to hire.

It is complete with toilets and kitchen facilities.

“Staff spend a lot of time here and we wanted to make it a welcoming space,” she said.

Dodd said the mural took him about two weeks to complete, working between four or five hours a day.

He said after a long session he needed the ability to step back look at his work with a fresh perspective.

While he got a lot of interest from his public call for projects, Dodd said it was important to him that he do the St John mural because they were a community organisation that were always giving back – and the walls provided a nice big canvas for his creativity to flow.

St John gave the brief that they wanted the mural to represent the local environment, and the rest was up to Dodd.

For his large-scale murals, Dodd said he preferred using a doodle grid as a reference to ensure his proportions were accurate to his original concept.

In the early stages the technique, made up of seemingly random combinations of scribbles and rudimentary symbols, can look a lot like graffiti.

Dodd said it made for some interesting conversations when he was working on an outdoor mural where the public could see his process.

His murals can be found in multiple places in the Whakatāne District including on the back of the Whakamax building on Canning Place, at Apanui and Otakiri schools, the kohanga in Awatapu and there is a large collection of his earliest works at Iramoko Marae.

Dodd has now returned to Perth, where he is a musician, runs children’s painting workshops and paints the odd mural.

He said it was particularly special to him that his former Whakatāne High School art teachers, Brian Soppit and Sue Whale, were able to attend on Tuesday night.

Ms Whale said it was always nice to see what happened to students after they left school, especially when they choose to continue creating art.

“It’s a lovely feeling to see former students’ work.”

Dodd used paint from the local Resene shop and Eastbay Hire provided a portable scaffold for the project.

The community can hire the space that houses Dodd’s latest work by emailing [email protected]