10th annual PRHBTN Street Art Festival brings five new murals to Lexington

LEXINGTON, Ky. (WKYT) - While taking a walk through downtown Lexington, you may notice a lot more color.

The city’s getting five new murals this year as part of the annual PRHBTN Street Art Festival, bringing artists from around the world.

Kids at Harrison Elementary School will now have a work of art as their recess backdrop. It’s one of the new murals added in downtown Lexington this year.

“My wife and I started doing this in 2011, in a way because we saw big blank walls that kind of just sat there,” said PRHBTN co-founder John Winters. “To bring something new to a neighborhood, to bring something new to people to see and interact with and speak with the artist…and a little bit of a surprise around Lexington.”

The festival was canceled last year due to the pandemic. This year for its 10th anniversary, every work of art’s by a returning artist.

One of these artists is local Joe King. He painted a mural based on Greek Mythology, right by Transylvania University.

For Winters, each mural is a part of a vision, that’s now over a decade in the making.

“It’s our passion project. We don’t take salaries, we don’t get paid, we don’t make any money off of it,” Winters said. “We just really love changing walls in Lexington and giving back to a community we love and a town that we love, it’s our home.”

If you’re interested in checking out murals in Lexington, you can find locations here.

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