Celebrating Dolly Parton (12 Photos)

Dolly Parton was already on the walls

Dolly Parton died on August 25, 2026, at age 80, Reuters reported. Her family announced the news through her official Instagram account. Long before then, artists had painted her on brick walls, a school façade, nightclub parking lots and gates, while a bronze Dolly sat outside her hometown courthouse. These twelve works show her as a hometown daughter, reader, ally and champion for children.

More: Hit the Right Note! (20 Photos)

---

🎸 Jim Gray’s Dolly Parton statue — Sevierville, Tennessee, USA 🇺🇸

Jim Gray’s statue shows a young, barefoot Dolly seated with her guitar on a Smoky Mountain boulder on the Sevier County Courthouse lawn. The six-and-a-half-foot bronze was unveiled on May 3, 1987, after Gray spent more than 2,000 hours making it, according to Parton’s official website. It also appears in Visit Sevierville’s public-art guide.

💡 Nerd Fact: Parton told People that her father joked the pigeons treated the monument as an outhouse. Even so, he secretly visited the courthouse at night with a bucket of soapy water to clean it.

---

🍔 “Red’s Café” by Ben Harrison and Seth Bishop — Sevierville, Tennessee, USA 🇺🇸

The mural looks back at Dolly’s Sevier County childhood and her fondness for Red’s Café. The blonde girl is not a literal portrait of Dolly: according to Visit Sevierville, a friend’s eight-year-old daughter modeled for the artists. Ben Harrison, now known as Zaxerl, and Seth Bishop of Smoky Mountain Mural Co. painted it over two weeks in early autumn 2020, beside The Appalachian’s patio at 129 Bruce Street. The photo is from Carol M. Highsmith’s Library of Congress archive.

💡 Nerd Fact: According to Visit Sevierville, the original call for proposals told artists not to include Dolly Parton. After Harrison and Bishop were chosen, the committee changed its mind and asked for a Dolly-related design with local meaning. The real Red’s Café opened in 1946, the year Parton was born. Dollywood later named Red’s Drive-In after it when the attraction opened in 1995.

🔗 Follow Smoky Mountain Mural Co. on Instagram

---

📚 Dolly’s literacy mural by Kim Radford — Nashville, Tennessee, USA 🇺🇸

On the Commerce Street side of Hume-Fogg Academic High School, Kim Radford painted Dolly reading with a child in a rocking chair, with butterflies and blocks of bright color around them. FOX 17 reported that the mural honors Parton’s contributions to childhood education and literacy. By June 2026, her Imagination Library had given away more than 325 million books and was sending out over 3.5 million books each month.

💡 Nerd Fact: Parton’s family and management commissioned the mural for her 75th birthday. She created the Imagination Library for her father, whose inability to read had limited his opportunities. Before he died, he told her it was probably the most important thing she had ever done.

🔗 Follow Kim Radford on Instagram

---

🦋 Dolly at The 5 Spot by Kim Radford — Nashville, Tennessee, USA 🇺🇸

At The 5 Spot, 1006 Forrest Avenue, Radford surrounded Dolly with butterflies and wildflowers and added words from Parton’s support for the Black Lives Matter movement, as Visit Music City notes. She finished the mural in August 2020. After black paint was thrown across the portrait in early August 2026, Radford returned and restored it herself.

💡 Nerd Fact: The 5 Spot was not the planned site. Nashville Public Art reports that a deal for a similar Dolly mural at a downtown honky-tonk fell through, so Radford asked for a wall on social media. The venue offered its exterior. According to Audiofemme, Radford’s young son was also receiving a free Imagination Library book each month when she painted it.

🔗 Follow Kim Radford on Instagram

---

🎨 Strong Alley Dolly by Colton Valentine and Megan Lingerfelt — Knoxville, Tennessee, USA 🇺🇸

Colton Valentine painted the original portrait in 2019 but ran out of time before adding all the detail he intended. WVLT reported that after it was defaced in April 2020, Dogwood Arts consulted Valentine and brought in local artist Megan Lingerfelt to restore and enhance it. The Daily Beacon says Lingerfelt repaired the face and added curls, makeup, accessories, a denim jacket and a butterfly. Both artists are credited for the finished mural in Strong Alley at 32 Market Square.

💡 Nerd Fact: Valentine initially planned to paint Elvis Presley and was unfamiliar with Dolly Parton. According to The Daily Beacon, Lingerfelt and another artist sang “Jolene” to jog his memory, without success.

🔗 Follow Colton Valentine and Megan Lingerfelt on Instagram

---

🕊️ Tribute to frontline workers by David Gilmore — Costa Mesa, California, USA 🇺🇸

In 2021, David Gilmore painted this 18.5-by-51.5-foot portrait at 719 West 19th Street, then the home of STRUT Bar & Club. Working from photographs of Dolly at different ages, he created a composite portrait with open arms and beams of light, the Los Angeles Times reported. According to NBC Los Angeles, the mural was unveiled on March 13 and dedicated to frontline workers. Vanderbilt University Medical Center says Parton’s $1 million gift helped fund early research connected to Moderna’s phase-one vaccine trial.

💡 Nerd Fact: Luke Nero first considered Ruth Bader Ginsburg for the wall but decided against a potentially divisive political tribute, according to the Los Angeles Times. About 50 artists answered his open call before Gilmore was selected, Q Voice News reported.

🔗 Follow David Gilmore on Instagram

---

🌈 Dolly Parton and RuPaul by Gus Cutty — Asheville, North Carolina, USA 🇺🇸

At Beauty Parade, 783 Haywood Road, Gus Cutty painted the original Dolly portrait in 2018 and added RuPaul in spring 2021. The salon says owner Terra Marshall proposed the second figure during the pandemic as a message of love and mutual support.

💡 Nerd Fact: In a 2022 season 14 episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race, the final seven contestants were divided into teams and asked to recreate either its Dolly or RuPaul portrait.

🔗 Follow Gus Cutty on Instagram

---

🚪 “#EdgewaterDolly” by Michelle Lytle — Chicago, Illinois, USA 🇺🇸

Michelle Lytle painted #EdgewaterDolly on the front gate of The Lytle House at 5517 North Broadway after taggers repeatedly hit the fence. The venue’s official art initiative credits Lytle and says she touches up the portrait before summer each year. Lytle told the Chicago Sun-Times that she had loved Parton’s music since childhood and admired her support for LGBTQ people.

💡 Nerd Fact: One couple told the Chicago Sun-Times that the portrait helped persuade them to book The Lytle House for their wedding. They photographed themselves with it and played “9 to 5” at the reception.

---

🌺 Dolly by MuckRock — Nashville, Tennessee, USA 🇺🇸

Jules Muck, who signs her work MuckRock, painted this portrait in mid-October 2020 on the south wall of Blue Door Framing at 2809 Gallatin Pike. Nashville Public Art documented the poppies encircling the portrait and continuing around the front of the building. Pale lettering concealed in Dolly’s hair spells “Nashville” and “MuckRock.”

💡 Nerd Fact: Muck’s biography says she began writing graffiti as a teenager in Europe and England in the 1990s, then spent years working under New York pioneer Lady Pink. In 2020—the year she painted this Dolly—she also founded Muck Recovery, a Venice Beach nonprofit that hosts twelve-step meetings and builds solidarity through art.

🔗 Follow Jules Muck on Instagram

---

💖 Dolly at Apple Blvd Boutique by Patrick Ganino — Frisco, Texas, USA 🇺🇸

Patrick Ganino finished this Dolly portrait for Apple Blvd Boutique in September 2021 and shared the completed wall on X. At 8760 Seventh Street, the pink façade pairs Dolly with huge “Always Love” lettering and butterflies. The Scout Guide credits this photograph to Carol Riell Photography.

💡 Nerd Fact: The words “Always Love” recall “I Will Always Love You,” which Parton did not write as a romantic breakup song. She wrote it as a farewell to Porter Wagoner when she ended their professional partnership; her own versions topped the country chart in 1974 and again in 1982.

🔗 Follow Patrick Ganino on Instagram

---

✨ The former Dolly mural at Sam Flax by Sabrina Shumaker — Orlando, Florida, USA 🇺🇸

Sabrina Shumaker painted this bright, angular portrait for the 2022 Sam Flax Wall Project at 1800 East Colonial Drive. In her March 8, 2022, Instagram post, she said she had finished it in time for International Women’s Day, and the completed work also appears in her official portfolio. The installation was temporary: ClickOrlando reported on a new round of murals painted there in February 2025.

💡 Nerd Fact: Shumaker’s biography says she began her professional art career in Orlando in 2016 after teaching herself oil-painting techniques through YouTube tutorials. She later expanded into sculpture and large-scale murals.

🔗 Follow Sabrina Shumaker on Instagram

---

🌼 The lost Dolly mural by Bryan Deese — Nashville, Tennessee, USA 🇺🇸

Bryan Deese completed this flower-ringed Dolly at the Stop-N-Shop at 5100 Indiana Avenue in March 2020. Deese shared the finished mural on March 31, identified the location and thanked the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum. Nashville Public Art says the museum sponsored it and that the wall was normally used for temporary concert murals. The Dolly portrait was painted over later in 2020 and now survives only in photographs.

💡 Nerd Fact: Deese came to mural painting through graffiti and graphic design. In an interview with City Lifestyle, he said he still approaches mural composition more as a designer than as a painter, with typography remaining central to his work.

🔗 Follow Bryan Deese on Instagram

---

Which one is your favorite?