A mural in memory of the late Nicola Bulley has been unveiled in the town she grew up in.
The mum-of-two went missing on January 27 during a dog walk in St Michaels on Wyre after the morning school run. The 45-year-old's body was discovered in the River Wyre near Preston, Lancashire, on Sunday (February 19) following a major search effort lasting more than three weeks.
Friends of Nicola gathered at a candlelit vigil at the bandstand in the centre of her hometown of South Woodham Ferrers, Essex, at 8pm on Thursday evening (February 23). The previous day, local artist Danny Bench had completed an incredible mural of Nicola, just round the corner on Hullbridge Road, reports the Mirror.
He attended William de Ferrers School with Nicola and Danny, 48, was friends with Nicola's sister Louise Cunningham, who approved the work before he started. He took two days off work after realising he had to do something to mark Nicola's passing.
Danny - who runs Murals by Danny Bench - spent around four hours on Wednesday doing the bulk of the work, having had the idea lying in bed a couple days before. He said: "A lot of people were stopping and hanging out of the windows.
"I finished it just before the school run and it went a bit crazy with everyone stopping and taking pictures and putting flowers down. It was really nice for people to stop and see it."
Danny moved to Leigh-on-Sea in Southend around six months ago but is still well-known in his hometown, having found a love for street art while still at school. He takes commissions from the likes of Liverpool FC and Red Bull nowadays but said a tribute to Nicola was for free for his local community.
"When I heard about Nicola, I thought I’ve got to do something," he explained. "That's the ideal wall to do it because it's in her home town, it’s on a main road, on a T-junction so you can see it. Everybody can see it, everybody can appreciate it. I just had to do it."
He got the idea late on Monday night and quickly got the ball moving, postponing work for a client the next morning. Danny selected one of many images of Nicola that have been released during the search for her and sent a mock up to Louise.
"I didn’t want to do it off my own back so I messaged her and said I want to do a piece for Nicola and she said, I’d love that," he said. The wall, outside a One Stop shop, has been used by Danny before to create pieces for Remembrance Sunday.
He explained: "I normally do a piece on that wall every year. About four years ago I just did a stencil of a soldier for Armistice Day and it went a bit mad on Facebook. They didn’t know it was me, it was a Banksy-type thing that I did.
"Following year I went back and said I did the stencil, I want to do a proper piece and so I did a soldier with a background and then went back over that with a different one. Then last year for Remembrance Day I did a spitfire flying through the sky, dropping poppies."
Referring to the Nicola mural, he continued: "There’s loads of pictures being posted of her, obviously, and I just went for that one where she’s got a nice smile, put it in Photoshop, changed it to black and white and then just did the black background with the heart, I just wanted to keep it quite simple, really.
"I did a mock up, I’ve got a picture of the wall, so I superimposed the picture onto the wall to see what it looks like. Then that’s what I sent over to Lou to approve and that’s what I used for the artwork."
At around 2pm on Tuesday, Danny then headed over to the wall to white wash the spitfire work and then projected the Nicola image at around 5.30pm once it was dry. From mid-morning on Wednesday he completed the job, finishing around 3.30pm.
"I’m busy and I’ve got to work seven days a week, but I just took a couple of days off," he said. I spent a lot longer on this one, I spent a bit more time. Every artist is never happy with his work. I’m pretty happy with this one. I probably could have done a little bit more.
"The photos don’t do it justice. If you see it in real life it looks a lot better. For some reason, with art you can take a picture and it can look wicked in the picture and not so good in real life. But this is vice versa, it looks better when you’re standing there with because you can really appreciate it. I really enjoyed doing this."
Danny said he's a little uncomfortable with the attention he's now getting after a picture of the finished work was posted online. "I did it for the friends and the family. It was for them, it wasn’t for personal gain," he said.
Asked how long the mural will remain, he said hopefully for a couple of years. "This one’s going to be there for a while," he said. "I don’t want to paint over this one. I’ll probably leave it for a year or a couple of years and then we’ll go from there."
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