Their mission is to paint the Colorado plains. Meet the duo behind 'Some Girls and a Mural'

A 60-foot-tall explosion of color greets motorists heading west toward Limon, Colorado, on Main Street. “Heart of Harvest” is a colossal painting on a grain silo by artists Staci Beauford and Audrey Sayles. The duo calls themselves “Some Girls and a Mural.”

Our goal is to “paint the plains,” Beauford said, sitting in the backyard of a Limon home where they were preparing to begin their 98th piece. In Army veteran Everett Churchwell’s garage, they will depict his time as a helicopter crew chief in Vietnam.

“It’s a tribute to the guys he served with, a tribute to his time and his family, and it will include a big American flag,” Sayles added.

TWO FEMALE MURALISTS PAINTING A SCENE ON A WALL — Audrey Sayles, left, and Staci Beaufort, “Some Girls and a Mural,” work on a piece depicting a Vietnam War scene for Everett Churchwell at his Limon home on May 20, 2024.

Everett Churchwell has his arm around his wife Norma as they stand in front of a mural in Limon depicting his Army helicopter service in Vietnam. — Everett and Norma Churchwell of Limon stand in front of their new mural, which honors Everett’s service in Vietnam. The artists call themselves “Some Girls and a Mural.”

Other paintings include a barn in Seibert, a beef store in Flagler, a library in Burlington and a water tower in Bennett. They create what they call a mural trail.

“Art is needed in these rural communities and we have a thriving business, so we’re not going to stop,” Beauford said.

“My mother kept telling me, ‘You have to go to art school.’ And I’d say, ‘I can’t be an artist in a small town,’” Beauford recalls. “So now we’re really fighting to tell students, ‘You can do whatever you want in a small town.’”

Sayles, who grew up in Seibert, gave up her job as a history teacher to pursue the profession full time. Beauford juggles motherhood and used to balance a young child on her hip while she painted.

They gradually adopted the label of “artist.”

In 2018, when Beauford and Sayles started their business, they didn’t have in mind creating a mural business that would be lucrative enough to support two families. Beauford had painted a modest American flag when the mayor of Limon at the time approached him with an offer to do something bigger.

This is how their first and probably most ambitious project, the aforementioned “Heart of Harvest,” was born. It shows a farmer wearing a baseball cap playing with a child. The sky, the landscapes and a green John Deere combine harvester fill the two figures. Wheat grows between them. All on a 21-meter-high structure.

“We used a company in Denver that does projections for cinema, and they were able to project the outline for us on a large scale,” Beauford says.

MURAL PAINTING OF A FARMER ON THE SIDE OF A GRAIN SEAT — Audrey Sayles and Staci Beaufort’s “Heart of Harvest” mural on the Norag grain elevator in downtown Limon on May 20, 2024, is one of their most recognizable works.

To draw the projection, the work had to be done in the dark and the women used glow sticks to direct a bucket truck operator below.

“When you grow up on a farm, you learn to do things on your own. That’s what our fathers, mothers and all our family members did.”

Sayles then shared images of the completed work on Facebook and the post garnered more than 100,000 likes.

“For us, in a town of about 3,500 people, we felt like we did the most we could to go viral.”

Since then, they have been crisscrossing the plains with their paintbrushes, including their favorite shrub, which they have named “Chuck.”

“It’s very good for clouds,” Beauford said.

MURAL PAINTING OF ACTOR JOHN WAYNE WITH A COWBOY HAT — Audrey Sayles and Staci Beaufort, “Some Girls and a Mural,” painted this tribute to the late actor John Wayne on the side of the Lincoln Theatre in Limon.

Some girls and a mural make rural people (they use the term “border communities”) feel seen.

“We always like to say that we try to bring art out of the community, instead of on “a community,” Beauford said.

“We want people who come to our towns to say that there is life here,” Sayles added proudly. “We like to talk about history, but we also want the idea to be shared that the better days are not behind us. There is progress, there is a move forward in our small communities.”