'You Can Overcome It': Tulsa Artist Inspires Students Through Murals

A Tulsa artist is using his skills to help encourage high school students to read.

Arthur Haywood has already created several mural paintings at Central High School. Thanks to a community partnership, he can now extend that series.

Haywood is the recipient of the 'Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition Community Artist Partnership' grant.

He said he knows how important reading is, because his father used to run reading camps and his mother was a school board president.

He said he's excited to inspire future generations of students to read by portraying them in his murals.

Haywood's new murals will show young people floating among stars and collecting pages from books. He said it is a metaphor for what reading lets people achieve.

"People are limitless in terms of their potential. I show young people in a heroic light that you can defeat these evil dragons. So it's just metaphors for the good and evil we run into every day. And to show young people in a light where you can overcome it," Haywood said.

Haywood has also worked on mural projects in Paris and Pennsylvania.

You can check out his work at the Tulsa Artist Fellowship as part of First Friday in Downtown Tulsa on February 2.