In AJ Paliev’s Deerfield mural, horse, rider keep ‘marching forward . . . to an unknown place’

AJ Paliev did this mural, titled “Walking Clock,” during the pandemic when he was a student at Deerfield High School. (Robert Herguth / Sun-Times)

The mural on Deerfield Road near Waukegan Road in Deerfield shows a “horseman” emerging from a tunnel inside a pocket watch and walking along train tracks through a field of sunflowers, with the earth somehow looming in the sky.

“It felt like he and the horse were marching forward from an unknown place to an unknown place,” says AJ Paliev, who created the mural during the COVID-19 pandemic while he was a student at Deerfield High School.