Paul LaJeunesse creates large-scale, site-specific murals that reflect the historic, identities, communities and locations. His work is rooted in research, collaboration and storytelling. Through his process he transforms public spaces into a shared narrative.
Featured Public Art Project: Forge
A Tribute to the North Shore’s Untamed Beauty
Commissioned by Stone Harbor Wilderness Supply
Grand Marais, Minnesota
Forge captures the rugged spirit and untamed beauty of Minnesota’s North Shore. Inspired by the rivers, forests, and changing light that define this iconic landscape, the mural serves as both a visual celebration and a narrative of place, capturing the connections between people and the environment. Created using the Polytab method, this 10′ x 20′ mural blends studio precision with on-site impact, ensuring long-term vibrancy and resilience against the elements.
Thought creates distance and destroys the immediacy of direct experience, yet it is by thoughtful reflection that the elusive moments of the past draw near to us in present reality and gain a measure of permanence.
– Yi-Fu Tuan
My research revolves around the concept of place and how places are assimilated with personal values to create meaning for our lives. The paintings allude to observable orders of both societal structures and the phenomenal world, rendered congruently with reference to the inner psyche and collective unconscious. The paintings do not attempt to depict a scene, but rather to harken to an experience in which there is a transcendence of self, to bring one closer to understanding our relationship to the world.
Through reconstruction of places, I am able to exhibit their significance. The way marks describe space, light and structure is an allegory for the balance between unity and perceived dichotomies. It is this balance between the singular and the whole that can lead to questions of the nature of perception and reality, objectivity versus subjectivity, and the physical and metaphysical. The concept of place has neither subject nor an object, rather it is the experience of responding to, and associating with, the physical environment. Memory strongly influences perception of the present, and potential future; it helps contextualize experiences. Yet memories can create a jumbled timeline, weaving together multiple days into a single occasion, or hold one moment still as though time has paused. Despite these inconsistencies what is most important to me is not the factuality of recollection, but rather how value is assigned to what is remembered.
– Paul Lajeunesse