Banks Compton has a lifelong obsession with butterflies. As a child, he collected insects and thought he might become an entomologist one day. “I just have a fascination with them, and they remind me of my childhood aspirations,” he says.
It’s no wonder butterflies now feature prominently in the work of the 22-year-old artist who spent his early childhood in Mobile, moving with his family to rural Demopolis when he was 10. Banks is quickly becoming known for his vibrant murals that are helping to bring communities together.
The Eastern tiger swallowtail butterfly is at the heart of one of the three murals he painted this year in the Black Belt city of Linden, population 2,000. His latest mural there features a wide, welcoming front porch with cane-backed rocking chairs just like his grandmother’s, which are made with wood from the family farm. Eleven butterflies are hidden in the whimsical landscape.
Banks Compton sits in one of his grandmother's rocking chairs and admires his most recent mural in Linden, Alabama. "You can literally step into the image," he says of the wide, welcoming front porch. (Photo courtesy Banks Compton)
The mural will be a focal point for the new Thomas Terrace community gathering spot downtown, where plans call for adding a stage, string lights and shade sails. “I wanted a porch scene because the terrace will be the community porch,” he says. “The town is so welcoming and excited about it.”
That’s one of the things Banks enjoys most about creating murals – the opportunity to interact with people. “I like to see what they see in my murals,” he says. “It’s fun to see the different interpretations.”
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‘I wanted to show what my world looked like’
An only child, Banks always entertained himself by creating art. As a teenager, he earned enough money selling pet portraits to buy his first car, a 1997 Pontiac Sunfire convertible.
“That’s when I realized I could do something with this,” he says.
Since no art classes were offered in his high school, he enrolled in a pre-college program at Parsons School of Design in New York City, where his eyes were opened to the possibilities of a career as an artist. “It was the first time I had exposure to art as a college path,” he says.
While there, he learned about the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), one of the country’s top art colleges. “You have to submit a portfolio,” he says. “For practice, I applied when I was a junior in high school.”
Much to his surprise, he was accepted early to the highly selective college on the condition that he earn his GED.
The summer before he left for RISD, he drove his convertible, with its leaky roof, to New Orleans, where he interned with Kern Studios building Mardi Gras floats. Then he was off to RISD, where he was “one of the few from the Deep South,” he says.
During college, he found himself painting what he knew: scenes and people from the South. “I wanted to show what my world looked like,” he says. His work included “portraits of family and friends” and “life on my farm in Demopolis, things from home.”
Banks Compton painted this mural featuring a majestic deer and a fearless dog for family friends at a camp house in Demopolis, Alabama. (Photo courtesy Banks Compton)
After his sophomore year, he was selected for an internship with David Monn’s New York City event-planning company. Monn had been impressed with Banks’s experience building Mardi Gras floats and hired him as a production assistant. “By the end, I had my own crew” to help stage elaborate and over-the-top parties and events. “I absolutely loved it.”
In the spring of his junior year, he traveled to Italy to study painting through RISD’s European honors program. He left at the beginning of 2020, right before the Covid pandemic hit. He had to evacuate Italy and return to campus just as the college was going online-only.
“I flew home and finished back on my family farm,” he says. He cleared out a building his grandmother had used for storage and turned it into his studio, where he was able to spread out and create large paintings. “I created the best art I made in college during that time,” he says.
Once again, Banks missed the opportunity to walk across a stage to accept his diploma – something he has yet to do. But he “graduated, closed my laptop and that was it,” he says.
Opening doors
During the pandemic, his beloved aunt died of lung cancer, and Banks lost a job offer to work for David Monn, who had been forced to downsize as fewer events were held. So he and two friends who had also lost their jobs decided to travel west and visit various cities to determine where they might like to live and work.
“It was an amazing experience to see so much of the country,” he says.
When they hit the last city on their cross-country trek, Banks finally found his people among the “hippies and cowboys in Phoenix.” He reached out to Taylor Nelson, a prolific mural artist, by sending her a message: “Hi, I’m tall. Can I help you paint murals?”
She did need his help, and they became fast friends. “I was used to doing large-scale work,” he says. “She taught me how to be a muralist.” They stayed busy painting Instagram-friendly murals on walls at Airbnb properties. Business-savvy Taylor taught him how to make a living through painting, with a goal of creating fine art in the future.
And Taylor was smitten with his “creative genius, loving heart and infectious spirit.” He had a knack for making her laugh until she cried, even as they worked hard and fast. “Banks was incredibly meticulous, caring of every single paint stroke and executing his portion with complete professionalism,” she says.
Meanwhile, back in Alabama, his name was tossed around at the Marengo County Extension Office, where the city of Linden hoped to have its own mural welcoming visitors. He was hired to paint the first mural he’d done on his own.
“Because it was public, everyone in the town stopped to thank me,” he says. “It was so moving to see my art having an impact on those who got me to college by buying my pet portraits.”
He also painted the photo wall featuring a butterfly surrounded by camellias – “a fun thing to interact with” – in Linden.
After he did the first Linden mural, “People from all over started calling me,” he says. He left Phoenix and moved to Foley to be closer to his tight-knit family. His time out west, working with Taylor, gave him “the support and knowledge I needed to branch out on my own,” he says.
This mural, painted for a client in Foley, features a great blue heron, an egret and lotuses from the Mobile River Delta. (Photo courtesy Banks Compton)
Banks loves the large scale and the logistics of painting murals, but interacting with residents makes it especially rewarding to him. “Some people don’t get to see the fruits of their labor,” he says. “For me, it’s immediate when people come up and tell me what it means to them and their community.”
After the Linden mural, the mayor of tiny Boligee contacted him to paint a mural on the new community center housed in the former high school. “A lot of older people stopped and told me they saw God in what I was doing,” he says. “I’m fascinated by religious art. It was so moving that it had spiritual meaning to them.”
In Boligee, Alabama, Banks Compton painted a mural that tells a story about the importance of transportation in the town, with a train in the 1920s on the left and a log truck on the interstate today. (Photo courtesy Banks Compton)
He’s now in the process of turning his garage into a studio as he seeks out more work around Alabama. “Every project I do opens more doors,” he says.
Though she misses him, his mentor, Taylor Nelson, is cheering him on from Phoenix. “Words cannot express how much joy it brings me seeing him spread his wings in the way he is now,” she says.
In that sense, he’s like the vibrant butterflies taking flight in his work. There’s no telling how far his wings will take him.
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Banks Compton painted one of his favorite subjects, a butterfly, on the side of his parents' home in Demopolis, Alabama. (Photo courtesy Banks Compton)