Richmond muralist John Wehrle merges city’s past, present on concrete canvases

If you’ve ever driven on San Pablo or Macdonald avenues, you have likely seen the murals adorning otherwise drab stretches of Richmond’s urban landscape. In one of them, grizzly bears and deer roam past storefronts selling Ohlone baskets and hunting tools while Californios — 19th century Spanish settlers — sit astride their horses in a gas station. In the other, a ghost trolley passes through a street while a man in a derby hat looks on.  

These whimsical, albeit slightly faded, murals are the creation of John Wehrle, a Richmond artist and muralist who has made a career at toying with everyday scenes while paying homage to the region’s history This spring, the Richmond Art Center will mount a retrospective of Wehrle’s career, which has spanned more than 60 years and includes sculptures, photography and paintings. 

“John has been an institution in Richmond for many years,” said Jose Rivera, the director of the Richmond Art Center. “His art is a journey through Richmond history. People see the murals every day, so it’s easy to take them for granted. But it’s important to know the history of the community where you live.”

In the mid-90s’ San Pablo Avenue mural, called “Revisionist History,” Wehrle is trying to convey the idea that “everyone who was once here is still here.” In another panel, men on horseback are inside a museum gallery, a tongue-in-cheek image that fuses the past and present.

“I’m a realist painter, but I’m exploring an alternate reality,” said Wehrle. “There’s always something else there.” 

Wehrle was born and raised in Texas and is as lanky and laconic as a cowboy. He got his start painting in college, then joined the Army’s first Combat Art Team that was sent to Vietnam in 1966. There, he sketched landscapes, soldiers in hospitals and rappelling from helicopters and anything else that caught his eye. Following his release, he hightailed it to New York City, where he studied at the prestigious Pratt Institute.

self-guided richmond mural tour

Map: Where to see 8 John Wehrle murals in Richmond

He came to California in 1969 to teach at the de Young Museum and California College of Arts and Crafts. His first mural was done for the de Young in 1974, and many private commissions followed, in the Bay Area and beyond. In 1984, Wehrle was hired by the Olympic Committee to create murals for the Olympic Games held in Los Angeles, one of which can still be seen from Highway 110. 

Murals are art for the masses, able to be seen outside of galleries and museums. “There’s an element of performance that naturally happens when you’re standing out on a street painting for six months,” Wehrle said. “You meet all sorts of people, and you begin interacting with your audience.”

Wehrle and his wife, Susan Wehrle, a retired art teacher, moved to Richmond in 1990. Here, Wehrle found work with the city, painting murals depicting scenes from Richmond’s history. In a mural on the Macdonald Avenue underpass near the Transit Center, people wave to a passing train, a nod to the critical role that trains have played in Richmond’s history. Richmond station was an intercity railway station. The Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway opened to Richmond in 1900 and provided service until 1971, a source of jobs for many in the community. 

“John has a distinct style and his work is really eclectic and representative of his thoughts of what it means to be an artist,” said Jerarde Gutierrez, a local painter and art teacher who worked on “Revisionist History” under Wehrle’s tutelage while in middle school. “His work has an imaginative whimsy and playfulness to it, and gets the viewer to reconsider how they view the world.” 

Across town, at the Richmond Plunge, swimmers can gaze at another Wehrle creation: cranes, ducks and other birds stretch their wings against a backdrop of azure water and impossibly green trees. The 75-foot tall mural depicts Miller Knox Regional Shoreline park, located just west of the natatorium, turning a wall into a sort of window into what lies beyond. 

Wehrle often plays with ambiguity, pairing improbable subjects like wild animals loose on city streets, a Native American kiva inside a television and an Ohlone Indian crouching atop a gas pump. If there is a vision driving his work or central message he wants to impart, Wehrle says it’s to make people think.

“I don’t have the answers to the questions,” he says mysteriously. “I just have the questions.”

Now 83, Wehrle has experienced some health problems and underwent a seven-hour heart surgery earlier this year. Despite that, he still paints nearly daily and is making plans to restore “Revisionist History,” the San Pablo Avenue mural. 

Asked how he wants to be remembered, Wehrle laughs, then pauses for a moment before answering: “Well, I did my best to make the world a little more interesting.”