When Desire McGinn launched Riveting Paint & Pearl in early 2024, she questioned whether the Spokane market was large enough to sustain a dedicated commercial mural practice. Less than two years later, driven by business owners seeking custom visuals to boost exposure, she has worked nearly continuously from project to project.

Spokane-based Riveting LLC, which does business as Riveting Paint & Pearl, specializes in commercial murals, hand-painted signs, decorative finishes, and historic restoration. McGinn works directly with business owners, contractors, and design firms to turn walls and other building surfaces into extensions of a company's brand. 

Commercial projects are developed around a client's existing identity, space, and business goals, she says.

“I’m never the focal point of the work that I do,” McGinn says. “If I’m meeting with you, this is about you, your business, your brand, your visual identity.”

Her approach means there isn't a standard square-footage price for her murals. Each estimate depends on the project, McGinn explains. Interior and exterior work often requires different paints and preparation, while the condition and texture of a wall can affect labor. Weather, access, project timelines, surface repairs, and equipment, such as lifts, also can impact costs.

“With commercial work, you’re not just doing whatever you want,” McGinn says. “There's a timeline and budget you have to fit.”

McGinn currently is working with a designer from Spokane-based Stroom Interiors on her largest project to date: an 18-mural package for a new church in Hayden. Recently, McGinn worked on a commercial mural at Maria’s Taqueria, a restaurant at 1427 N. Argonne Road in Spokane Valley, which held its grand opening Sept. 5.

McGinn designed a 47-foot-by-9-foot mural on an interior wall illustrating restaurant owner Maria Martinez-Quechool’s family, heritage, and business concept. The mural's imagery features food, chickens, a sugar skull, a guitar, mezcal, and a Pacific Northwest pine tree. The images were intentionally selected and represent the brand's identity. For instance, mezcal represents Oaxaca, Mexico, where Martinez-Quechool’s husband is from, while the guitar represents his love of music. Martinez-Quechool requested the pine tree to represent her gratitude toward Spokane and the Pacific Northwest.

For Martinez-Quechool, the mural is more than decoration.

“It brings value to the business,” Martinez-Quechool says. “It brings people in and gives more traffic for my business.”

The restaurant already had invested heavily in its kitchen, equipment, and other opening costs when Martinez-Quechool considered adding the mural. She now plans to extend the artwork throughout the restaurant.

“It has been worth every cent we invested in this mural,” Martinez-Quechool says. “I would do it all over again without hesitation.”

Distinctive, site-specific artwork can impact brand recognition long after a project is finished, McGinn contends. Customers often photograph murals and share them online. In addition, McGinn regularly documents her projects through social media, providing additional exposure for the businesses she works with. Those posts can carry images of a local business well outside the Inland Northwest, including to people internationally, she says.

Other commercial projects McGinn has worked on include artwork at Seng’s Asian Barbecue & Hot Pot, a trade name for Sengsational Cuisine LLC, at 801 N. Monroe in Spokane. The design incorporated cherry blossoms, a cow, and other artwork extending into multiple areas of the restaurant.

Her portfolio also includes public-facing mural work in a bookstore event space and specialty finish work for contractors, along with restoration and painting projects in some historic Spokane homes. 

One of her first restaurant projects was at Chomper Cafe in Hayden, whose owners later hired McGinn for Belle’s Brunch House, also in Hayden, providing an early example of the repeat business that has become important to her company, she says.

A Gonzaga University art graduate, McGinn painted murals inside her own home in 2008 after deciding conventional framed artwork didn't fit its unusual walls and slanted ceilings. Photos she shared of early murals then led to commercial work. Her interests gravitated toward traditional sign painting in 2013 and she spent two years searching for someone willing to teach her the craft. She eventually found a mentor in 2015 and started Backspin Surface Design, in 2016.

Following a 2016 windstorm, when a tree damaged a historic South Hill home containing a mural, McGinn's career path evolved to remodeling, and she worked with a contractor to restore the home's artwork. She was offered a full-time position with the contractor after completing the project. She spent seven years working on historic homes, building experience in restoration while continuing mural and sign projects outside of work.

McGinn launched Riveting Paint & Pearl in January 2024, initially offering murals, signs, decorative finishes, and historic restoration services, expecting that a range of services would be necessary to sustain the company. Instead, murals took off.

“I genuinely thought Spokane would not be big enough to sustain just a mural practice,” McGinn says. “More businesses are investing in mural designs than I anticipated, though.”

Since October 2025, McGinn has moved almost continuously from one mural project to another, she explains. As Riveting Paint & Pearl continues growing, McGinn envisions opening a storefront combining examples of her work with vintage and modern merchandise centered around color.

Her larger goal, she explains, is to become more selective and focus on commercial projects where her skills can help businesses establish an identity customers remember.

“Being able to make a living with a brush in my hand, being able to have meaning to a client and help them grow their dream, ... there’s nothing more fun to me than that,” she says.