Long before Josh Harnack ever picked up a paintbrush, he had dreams of wearing a police uniform.
“When I was a kid, I really wanted to be a cop. And so there's like a part of it that he was living my dream as a kid,” said Harnack.
Josh never would have predicted that decades later he would be tasked with painting a mural for a fallen police officer: Constable Brett Ryan who was killed in the line of duty in 2023 alongside his partner Constable Travis Jordan.
“This has definitely been the most unique. This has been the most meaningful one because I've never had to capture somebody that I've never met who's passed away, as like a memorial.”
The City of Spruce Grove recently opened a state-of-the-art, multi-purpose recreation facility that includes two ice rinks. The Constable Brett Ryan mural is located behind the players’ benches in the rink named for the fallen officer. It is a fitting home for the art piece considering Ryan was an avid hockey fan, player, and referee.
“Once I kind of started working on the overall concept and sitting with it for a couple days, it really dawned on me how important this mural was.”
Harnack spent weeks on the project researching Ryan’s life.
“I really got a deeper appreciation, a sense of who Brett Ryan was as a person.”
In between paint strokes, Harnack says he caught himself talking to the man in the pictures.
“I know I had my fair share of conversations with him working on the wall. Talking to him, asking him for help to paint his face properly and to not screw it up, make him look handsome, you know,” said Harnack.
The artist knows his work will be viewed by Ryan’s family members, friends as well as strangers for decades to come. And he hopes that people see themselves in the mural.
“’Hey, that's me. I'm, I'm that person.’ And I want to either strive to be that person, uh, and to emulate that. So, I feel like in a way I kind of want people to be inspired by it.”