A Giant Capybara in a Window
What is the friendliest animal in the world?
Ask me, and I will tell you without hesitating. The capybara. Or, if you grew up the way I did, the chigüiro.
Last year, for Window Wonderland 2025, I got to paint another capybara. A very big one, sitting calm and unbothered in the Window at Gabby's, surrounded by blue morpho butterflies.
The finished capybara and blue morpho window mural at Gabby's
Why a Capybara
I wanted to bring a piece of Colombia into this space, and the capybara felt like the right way in. They are famously, almost comically friendly. They get along with everybody. Birds sit on them, other animals treat them like furniture. There is something about that easy, open nature that I wanted the mural to carry.
Next to the capybara, I painted blue morpho butterflies. If you have never seen one in person, the colour is almost hard to believe. Electric blue, shifting depending on the light. Between the two, I had exactly the mood I was after: colourful, calm, and warm enough that people would want to stop and look.
The contrast between the two does a lot of the work here. The bold blue of the butterflies against the softer tones of the capybara gives the whole piece an aura of friendliness, which was the entire point.
Andrea painting the solid-colour window mural in Toronto
Why a Window Mural Is a Different Job
This one was not painted on a wall. It was painted on glass, and that changes the process more than people expect.
Window murals need to be built in solid colour, with no soft blending or built-up layers the way I might work on a wall. I already lean toward solid, graphic colour in a lot of my work, so this suited me well, but it still meant prepping the surface differently and being precise about where one colour stopped and the next began. No room to fudge an edge and fix it in the next layer.
It was also cold. Genuinely cold, the kind of cold that makes holding a paintbrush steady its own small challenge. Nothing I could not push through, but worth saying, because a finished mural rarely shows you the weather it was painted in.
Close-up of the blue morpho butterflies against the capybara
Bringing Colombia Into These Lands
This theme shows up again and again in my work, and I don't think I will ever get tired of it. Taking the shapes, animals, and colour of Colombia and finding a way to bring them into the spaces I live and work in now. A capybara in a Toronto window is a small thing. It is also exactly the kind of small thing that keeps that connection alive for me. It is part of why tropical plants and Colombian nature keep finding their way into my murals, and part of what my Colombian roots bring to the work I do here.
If a window, storefront, or public space of your own could use a little of that same warmth, take a look at the gallery or let's talk about it.
Gracias for reading!
Completed capybara mural, Gabby's storefront window