The smoke stacks and metal landscape of Exxon Mobil may not be the most aesthetically pleasing, but to an artist, it's a blank canvas.

"I tried to take the edge off the industrial look and to make you smile when you come by," said Robert Dafford.

Dafford, of Dafford Murals, was commissioned by Exxon and The Walls Project to re-imagine a 4 story tall tank.

"Earlier this year we started looking at potential beautification projects for our community and one of the ideas that we had, because we had some maintenance due on the tank and had to paint the tank anyway, was the potential to put a mural to provide some beautification for the community," said Exxon employee Shanna Noble.

For Dafford, the landscape depicted here is important.

"I thought that it would be nice to portray what was here, or what used to be here," he said.

The image was inspired by actual photos of swamp land and Dafford's own artistic imagination.

"Part of our desire was to make sure our employees had something that they could be proud of outwardly facing to the community and so we had several different options of things that we could potentially put on the side of the tank here and this is what they chose," said Noble.

Despite having to take a break during the summer heat wave, it took Dafford and two other artists about five weeks to complete it.