Itinerant artist, James Garland, paints his surroundings wherever he finds himself. He barters his paintings to eat, to buy his supplies, and just to get by. John Kakavas a successful businessman, commissions James to paint a 16-foot mural for his living room. As the days pass and the mural takes shape, the partners find that not only do their artistic visions differ, but their personalities and beliefs system are incompatible, the mural becomes a battlefield, their theater of war.