Love Your Wild Neighbor, Bear Mural – Strip District, Pittsburgh – Scott Kowalski
In 2026, Humane Action Pennsylvania partnered with Pittsburgh-based muralist Scott Kowalski to bring the Love Your Wild Neighbor campaign to life through a large-scale public artwork in the Strip District. Rooted in a vision of coexistence, the mural presents a woodland scene centered on a mother bear and her cubs—symbolizing the quiet presence of wildlife within our shared environments. Through a balance of expressive form and intentional storytelling, Kowalski transforms the wall into more than a visual experience; it becomes a statement of respect, awareness, and responsibility. This work extends beyond its physical scale, inviting viewers to pause, reflect, and reconsider their relationship with the natural world. As part of this collaboration, the mural stands as a public-facing reminder that advocacy can live beyond policy—in the spaces we pass through every day.
Meet the Artist
Scott Kowalski
Pittsburgh-based artist Scott Kowalski’s connection to art developed early through a constant pull toward creating—drawing, building, and experimenting across mediums without a defined path forward. That instinct carried into adulthood, where his creative drive expanded alongside a career in design, web development, and digital media, shaping a multidisciplinary approach that blends technical precision with expressive freedom.
Over more than three decades working across creative industries, Kowalski has built a practice rooted in adaptability rather than a single discipline. While his professional foundation was established in design and development, his work as an artist evolved in parallel—driven by a need to explore ideas beyond structure and function.
Working primarily with acrylic on canvas, Kowalski approaches painting as an exploration of internal tension—the push and pull between calm and chaos. His abstract expressionist style leans into bold color fields, loose forms, and intentional ambiguity, allowing each piece to exist as both a personal reflection and an open-ended experience. Rather than seeking resolution, his work embraces complexity, translating emotion, memory, and uncertainty into layered visual narratives.
This philosophy extends directly into his mural work, where he views each wall as a merging of art and physicality—expression rooted in community and public experience. For Kowalski, murals are not just paintings at scale, but acts of presence. The world itself becomes a canvas, and public walls become some of the most powerful places for art to exist. His work in these spaces is driven by a belief that art should be encountered in everyday life—unexpected, accessible, and embedded within the environments we move through. Whether in the studio or on the street, Kowalski creates with the understanding that we are here to collect stories, process them, and return them to the world in a form others can feel.
