Behind The Brush with Muta
In this edition of Behind the Brush, we sit down with Miami-based Latino mural artist Muta. Blending bold abstraction with figurative and photorealistic elements, his work pulls inspiration from nature, architecture, city streets, and the cultural energy of the places he’s called home. From Miami’s tropical intensity to the wide-open landscapes of the desert, he creates massive visual ecosystems designed to make people stop, look, and feel something. Rooted in family, heritage, and a deep belief that public art belongs to the community, he’s constantly pushing beyond the wall, exploring new materials, environments, and ways for art to live in the world.
Your work blends abstract, figurative, and photorealistic elements — how did your visual language develop over time?
My visual language developed slowly through experimentation and necessity. When I first started painting walls, I was drawn to abstraction because it gave me freedom in shapes, gradients, rhythm, and movement. Over time I began introducing figurative and semi photorealistic surrealistic elements because I realized people connect emotionally with something recognizable.
What interested me most was the tension between those worlds. Abstract geometry and elements can represent energy, environment, or emotion, while a figurative element anchors the viewer in something human or familiar. The balance between those two languages became the foundation of my work exploring how they both could communicate with each other, or create a complete sentence or question in a way.
As the murals grew larger and more site-specific, ideas like to think my style evolved even more. I started thinking about how architecture, local history, and nature interact with the forms I paint. That’s when my work became less about just making images and more about creating visual ecosystems on walls. Going hand in hand with my belief that the minute that im done with a mural, it no longer belongs to me. It belongs to the world, the community, the people that walk by them and live with them from day to day.
Is there an emotion you find yourself returning to again and again in your work, consciously or not?
A sense of wonder and stillness. A sense of complication, and simpleness a the same time. I think a lot of my work tries to recreate that feeling you get when you pause and really look at something and can subconsciously and unintentionally meditate for a second. Similar to watching a bird standing in water, a tree moving in the wind, the way color shifts in the sky, or when a sense of melancholy kicks. Even in my abstract shapes there’s usually a calm rhythm or flow to them. Sometimes I want the work to feel like a moment suspended in time. Trying to capture something that slows you down for a second in the middle of a busy city.
What does being a Latino mural artist mean to you?
For me it means carrying forward a tradition of storytelling in public space. Murals have always been powerful in Latin history and culture. They’re ways communities communicate history, resistance, celebration, and identity directly on the walls around them. As a Latino artist working in public art, I feel a responsibility to contribute something meaningful to that lineage while also expanding it. My work might not always be overtly political or narrative, but it’s deeply rooted in place, heritage, and community. It’s also about representation. Seeing artists from similar backgrounds creating large-scale work in cities across the world reminds younger artists that they belong in those spaces, and to leave some sot of trail to look back even further at the pioneers like Dr.Atl, Rafael Tufino, Roberto Burle Marx, and so many other Latino artists who set the stage for us.
“As a kid, I walked with my pops, the sun low, the city warm. He showed me the walls. Colors, lines, rhythm—that’s when I saw color for the first time.” What inspired that reflection? How has your family shaped your journey as an artist?
It’s funny, because that quote is one of the last things I would expect for anyone to see or notice in one of my last murals painted inside of Starbucks due to it being so hidden. That reflection came from thinking about the earliest moments when the world started to feel visually alive to me. Walking through the city with my dad, noticing graffiti, signs, textures on walls and digging through his old sketches and drawings. Those were some of the first times I realized that cities themselves could be canvases. Painting that Starbucks in Wynwood, made me really want to think about some of the earliest memories I had in that neighborhood from when I was a kid being that it feeling that Wynwood has gotten to such an unrecognizable point recently. I can say my family played a huge role in that awareness unintentionally. Riding the city bus with my Abuela everywhere, my pops taking me around to so many places, having family parties every weekend, resulting in me being outside pretty often opened the doors to it all. All of those experiences taught me something important: art doesn’t only exist in galleries. It lives in neighborhoods, in architecture, in the everyday rhythm of a city. That idea eventually led me toward muralist.
You grew up in Phoenix and are now living in Miami, two cities with very different landscapes and cultural energies. How has that shift shaped your style and the stories you tell through your work?
I actually grew up in Miami, not Phoenix. Miami is where my roots and backbones are it’s where I first experienced the energy of murals, street art, and the rhythm of a city layered with cultures, boldness, and music. Being raised by a single mom while my father worked long days as a postman meant that a lot of my childhood involved exploring neighborhoods, streets, and the environment around me. That’s where I began to see walls as something more than just architecture.
Phoenix came later in my life, but it had a surprisingly strong impact on my perspective as an artist. Phoenix was a complete culture, and landscape shock for me. Even though I only lived there for a short time, I was able to root myself quickly within the mural community and experience the landscape in a completely different way. The desert environment, the open skies, the earth tones, the quiet strength of cacti, and desert plants was such a huge contrast with Miami’s tropical intensity. That contrast between the tropical of Miami and the calm, structural beauty of the desert expanded how I think about composition and color. Miami influences the life and movement in my work when it comes to people, the birds, plants, and flowing forms while the desert introduced a sense of space, geometry, and balance. In a way, my work now sits between those two worlds.
Which artists, philosophies, or cultural traditions do you return to most often for inspiration?
I’m inspired by a mix of different things. Seeing new things, street art and graffiti in the wild, classical art, a bit of philosophy, landscape architecture, Music, and conceptual arts. From the art world, artists who treat murals as architecture not just paintings, have always influenced me. For some examples, I’ve always been deeply drawn to Baroque paintings because of its dramatic lighting, movement, and emotional intensity. Roberto Burle Marx paintings because they were in a way his blue prints to his landscape architecture, and even local legends in Miamis Graffitti crews and individuals from MSG, SSK, VCR, DAM, VO5 , etc that have proven the test of time with bringing artwork into every crevice a city has to offer as a canvas. Philosophically, I often find myself drawn to Eastern thought, especially ideas around balance, impermanence, and the relationship between humans and nature. Those ideas tend to appear in subtle ways in my work through natural imagery or compositions that emphasize harmony and flow.
You’ve tackled some complex and massive projects — what’s the most unexpected challenge you’ve faced, and how did you overcome it?
One of the biggest unexpected challenges in mural work is that the environment becomes your collaborator, whether you want it to or not. Weather, wall texture, equipment logistics, permits, lighting, and your mental state can completely change how a piece unfolds. I’ve learned that adaptability, patience, and learning to ask for help is one of the most important skills a muralist can have. Sometimes you arrive with a perfectly planned concept, and the wall itself forces you to rethink everything. Over time I’ve learned to embrace that unpredictability. Instead of fighting it, I treat it as part of the creative process. One of the most unexpected challenges I’ve faced, was in painting a 100 ft mural battling the rain, and having to spend an entire day because of it running down the wall. This happened a total of 3 Times, and on three separate days not allowing me to move forward with the mural, driving me insane and unbearably inpatient. Fighting with the idea that I would never complete the mural while spending the entire day fixing it only for it to wash right off for three days in a row left me with such a low moral. I felt defeated, and beyond upset only causing more tension, and poor leadership with the team I was working with. But in approaching the wall on what was finally a perfect day, I couldnt help but think of sand mandalas thank monks in Tibet create only to destroy the moment they’re done. So I thought Ah this is a test of Patience! I know the weather is something out of our control, but what I did tend to learn that day was that being patient costs nothing, and allows you to properly move forward when the time is right.
How do you continue to push yourself creatively and evolve your work?
I try to constantly move between mediums and scales. Murals are my main practice, but experimenting with mixed media, cyanotypes, wood reefs, and studio work helps me approach walls differently when I return to them. Travel also plays a big role. Experiencing different environments and cultures shifts how I think about space, color, and storytelling. The goal for me isn’t to perfect one style forever, it’s to keep expanding the language.
Do you have daily rituals or habits that keep your creativity grounded?
Moving and observing. A lot of ideas come from simply paying attention to my surroundings. That can be anything from trying to make sense of how the corner of my block connects to the corner of my neighbors house, to plants, birds, architecture, shadows, and textures. I also sketch regularly, even if the sketches never become finished pieces. Creativity is a tricky one, because it comes in waves, and sometimes burn out is real. To say the least though, staying curious, “getting lost” and learning about something new no matter what it can be about the world usually keeps the creativity flowing.
Looking ahead five years, what new direction or uncharted territory do you want to explore as an artist?
I’d love to expand further into sculptural and environmental work. Pieces that exist not only on walls but within physical space. I’m also interested in creating projects that blend art, nature, and architecture more seamlessly. Things like public sculptures, installations, or spaces where people can interact with the artwork rather than just view it. Ultimately, I want my work to evolve beyond murals while still carrying the same visual language and storytelling.
For anyone who wants to keep up with your latest work, where’s the best place to follow along?
The best place to follow my work is on Instagram at @mutavision or my website www.mutavision.com. That’s where I regularly share murals in progress, new projects, and ideas I’m exploring in the studio. You can also follow along as my work continues to evolve through public art projects across different cities.
