When Dan McDermott finished the last of three murals along Paisley Road West in October, he was anticipating a buzz around it. After all, it marked the completion of the first phase of the Cardonald Mural Trail, a project funded by Glasgow’s Neighbourhood Infrastructure Fund. The idea was to inject colour into the area, celebrate its history and generate a bit of enthusiasm. The kind that places like the city centre and the west end garner for their street art.
But it wasn’t until this week that the three-storey gable-end depiction of a piper made headlines. A Change.org petition with around ten signatures found its way onto the local Craigton Facebook page. “Remove the hideous bagpiper mural from Mosspark Boulevard” demanded the creator, known only as “Concerned Citizen”.
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They demanded that Dan, of Spraywell Murals, apologise to the owners of Bella Vita, the much-loved Italian restaurant that sits beneath the piper. “This mural feels hostile and provocative towards an Italian-owned business that has proudly displayed an Italian flag outside its door for years,” wrote Concerned Citizen. "It is imposing a very narrow-minded view of Scotland and a very stereotypical view which again, is not reflective at all of its surroundings."
Swollen raindrops are hammering Mosspark Boulevard sideways as I duck into Rawlings family bistro to meet Dan amidst the media frenzy. People had been sending him links to stories all day. “My brother phoned me up,” he laughs. “And the guy from the company who erected the scaffolding sent it to me.”
He enjoyed spending the bulk of last year painting along this stretch of Paisley Road West. He spent a lot of time in Cardonald growing up. “It’s nice to come back to the area,” he says. “Especially an area that doesn’t have anything like that; it’s one of the wards that’s been forgotten about. I think that’s what the council is trying to do because a lot of the murals are concentrated in the city centre.”
The first mural on the Cardonald Trail was a depiction of Winnie Drinkwater, the world’s first woman to earn a commercial pilot’s licence. The colourful gable end piece is on the side of a Paisley Road West tenement just a stone’s throw from the controversial piper. The second, a tram and horsedrawn cart in front of local buildings, is painted on the side of the Tesco Esso Express a little further west down the road.
And it has brightened the place up, especially on a day like this. “It’s such a dreich day,” Dan adds. “And you see the mural, and the mural is nice and bright and colourful – I deliberately made that mural quite vibrant.”
While settling up the tab at Rawlston’s before heading to Bella Vita, the staff are keen to weigh in about the mural. “It’s a boring end [of Paisley Road West], and both [murals] at either end are beautiful - and it’s lovely we have a Scottish bistro right next to it,” chirps a waiter as he heaps delicious-looking pastries and scones onto a tiered cake stand.
“You can tell him we’ll be standing out in front of it with signs up if they try and paint over it,” his colleague adds.
Next door, Bella Vita co-owner Mimmo Rossi greets Dan with a warm grin. They wrap their arms around each other and pose for a picture. Far from taking the mural down, Dan says, he will be returning to add more to it. A thistle and a QR code so onlookers can learn more about the mural trail online. When Dan heads off to finish his current painting at a nearby primary school, Mimmo’s demeanour shifts. The petition, he tells me, has been very bad press for the restaurant.
Titled “An Apology”, the message claims that the petition was a joke started last week that was only meant to be seen and signed by a group of friends who found the mural “unsightly”. It was never meant to go viral.
Signed by “The Concerned Citizen”, the email explains that the petition was deleted once they realised that it was gaining attention. “It is clear from the debate the petition (a joke petition) has prompted that most locals like this mural. I apologise for naming and dragging your business into the discussion. I should not have done that.
“I sincerely apologise to the staff and owners of Bella Vita for any inconvenience caused. I am mortified it has gained media attention. I will learn from this foolish act of immaturity.”
“The thing is, he started something that went viral,” Mimmo says. “We need to explain ourselves to customers, they were concerned about us not being happy. We are a community restaurant and well known in the area.”
Even though it was nonsense, he says, the implications have been a cause for worry. “We still think at this point somebody out there was trying to damage the art and drag us into it because I’m Italian.”
He gestures to the flags outside, both Italian and Scottish. “Yeah, I’m Italian. But I’ve been here for 35 years, I know where I live, it’s Scotland,” he says proudly. “Scotland is where I have everything.”
If you have not ventured to this area in the southwest of Glasgow, perhaps now is the time. And if the weather is nice, you may even be able to watch Dan finishing up the now-infamous piper piece from a table on the terrace at Bella Vita.
Marissa MacWhirter is the editor of The Glasgow Wrap. Each morning, Marissa curates the top local news stories from around the city, delivering them to your inbox at 7am daily so you can stay up to date on the best reporting without ads, clickbait or annoying digital clutter. Oh, and it’s free. She can be found on X @marissaamayy1
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