Syracuse artist’s painting makes 780-mile, 3-decade journey to the mayor’s office

Syracuse, N.Y. – A watercolor painting of Syracuse City Hall is back where a prolific street artist created it more than 30 years ago.

Former Onondaga County residents Karen and Phillip “Bucky” Winters traveled from their Virginia home to Mayor Ben Walsh’s office recently to present the city an original painting of the historic downtown building done by Betty Munro.

Munro was a well-known local artist who created more than 200 watercolors of buildings, scenes and landscapes in Central New York from the 1970s into the 1990s. Her most frequent subjects were places and events in downtown Syracuse, where she worked at an easel outdoors.

The Onondaga Historical Association has a large collection of her paintings, including a series of 27 she created in 1974 and 1975 showing the construction of the Mulroy Civic Center. Munro was a fixture at the construction site, donning a hard hat to go with her paints, canvas and brushes.

The Syracuse City Hall painting was among her final creations, created in 1993. Munro eventually moved to Madison, Wisconsin, where she had lived as a child. She came to Central New York with her husband in 1966. She died in 2013 and was buried in Maplewood Cemetery in Camillus.

Karen Winters knew of Betty Munro, but did not know her personally. She discovered the city hall painting in 1995 at the Manlius Public Library, where it was on display and for sale. She and her husband had just moved from Marcellus to an Onondaga Hill home with plenty of wall space to fill.

“When I saw that painting, I go ‘I’ve got to have that,’” Winters said. “I like her loose style, and it’s very colorful.”

Winters paid $450 and the painting hung in the family’s town of Onondaga home until they moved to Virginia in 2012 to be closer to children and grandchildren. The painting came along, and found a spot in their new home.

But something happened to Winters after the move. Inspired in part by Munro, Winters started painting herself. She took lessons and began filling up the walls with her own creations. She made a studio and began selling her work.

At some point, the Betty Munro painting was replaced on the wall and put in a closet. Winters looked at it there and knew she had to find it a new home.

“I thought, ‘This just isn’t right,’” she said. “It belonged somewhere else.”

The couple reached out to the city of Syracuse to see if officials would accept a donation. The mayor’s office, which already has three Betty Munro paintings on loan from the historical association, was happy to say yes. The Syracuse Common Council formally voted to accept the donation, now valued at an estimated $1,200.

Karen and Bucky came up to Syracuse a few weeks ago and brought the painting to the mayor’s office on May 31. Walsh greeted them, and they hung the painting in his office’s lobby, joining the three Munro watercolors already on display.

“It was really neat,” Winters said. “We’re happy it’s home.”

City reporter Jeremy Boyer can be reached at jboyer@syracuse.com, (315) 657-5673, Twitter or Facebook.