A family arrives at the Golden Arrow Lakeside Resort on Main Street, Lake Placid, while Queensbury artist Hannah Williams paints a mural outside on Thursday, Aug. 8. (News photo — Andy Flynn)

LAKE PLACID — Families were going in and out of the Golden Arrow Lakeside Resort on Thursday, Aug. 8 — mothers with small children in tow, fathers pushing carts full of luggage — about 10 feet below Queensbury artist Hannah Williams, who was painting a mural in the sunshine.

The Holderieds, a family with roots in Germany that owns the property, hired Williams to paint two murals this summer.

“I knew that they wanted a Bavarian style-themed mural that kind of encapsulates Lake Placid, the activities, and so the mural above Locker Room 5 is all winter activities,” she said. “So you have a depiction of the 1980 ‘Miracle on Ice’ photo, you have a tobogganer, you have some cross-country skiers and some other winter elements.”

She painted the Locker Room 5 mural in July and was finishing the one outside the resort’s front door last week.

“For this wall, it’s more summertime,” she said, standing on the blue platform of a Genie lift with a variety of paint and brushes at her feet. “We have a mountain climber, a fly fisherman and some hikers.”

Queensbury artist Hannah Williams paints a mural outside the Golden Arrow Lakeside Resort on Main Street, Lake Placid, on Thursday, Aug. 8. (News photo — Andy Flynn)

There’s also a view of the High Peaks with Gothics and the 1980 Olympic ski jumps in the background.

“This is all curated by what the family wanted here at the Golden Arrow,” Williams said. “We had to go back and forth with revisions. I had a loose idea. We consulted months ago and have been touching base and finally landed on the final design by the end of July.”

Williams uses high-quality exterior latex house paint for her murals. She paints full time.

“If I’m not painting murals, I do live wedding paintings,” she said. “I do public art consulting, I teach mural courses for younger students, a little bit of everything.”

Williams graduated from Queensbury High School in 2011 and attended SUNY Adirondack, studying liberal arts, as they didn’t have a painting degree at the time.

Queensbury artist Hannah Williams takes a break from painting a mural outside the Golden Arrow Lakeside Resort on Aug. 8. (News photo — Andy Flynn)

“I’m pretty much all self-taught,” she said.

Williams received some valuable experience in 2016 and 2017 working at Adirondack Scenic, now called Adirondack Studios, in Argyle. It’s a major scenic design company that works with Universal Studios, Disney and other clients.

“There I really learned, within just a year, more about the production side of painting murals,” she said.

One project was for an indoor water park that involved painting a 100-foot long, 20-foot tall mural.

Williams likes the physicality of painting murals the most.

Here is the winter-themed mural Queensbury artist Hannah Williams painted earlier this summer at Locker Room 5 on Main Street. (News photo — Andy Flynn)

“Especially murals that are outside for the public. I’m passionate about public art,” she said. “The challenge, just the full-body movements. It’s very therapeutic. As far as the public art aspect, I love engaging with the community. There’s so much value with public art, and so I try to advocate for that as much as possible and make connections with the community wherever in painting. In return, everybody kind of gets to learn about it.”

Part of hiring Williams for the Golden Arrow and Locker Room 5 murals was to help introduce Lake Placid to the concept of public art, which has been one of the goals of the Lake Placid/North Elba Arts Alliance. Formed in 2021 as part of the latest village/town comprehensive plan, the Alliance has five voting member organizations: Lake Placid/North Elba Community Development Commission, Lake Placid Center for the Arts, Lake Placid Sinfonietta, Lake Placid-North Elba Historical Society and Adirondack Film.

In May 2023, the Alliance organized a sidewalk painting in front of the Mirror Lake Beach House.

“This is not a community that is used to public art, so to get them to support something, we have to tell them this isn’t permanent,” LPCA Managing Director Jon Donk said while the sidewalk mural was being painted in 2023. “Let’s just do it and see people excited about it and then maybe they’d be open to a wall (mural) or something that would be more permanent.”

Enter Williams, who said she’s honored to be a part of Lake Placid’s public art scene.

“It also makes art accessible to everybody, which is a big deal for me,” she said.