About Shaun
Shaun LaRose currently lives in Chattanooga Tennessee with his wife, and their five children, two dogs, three cats, three goats, thirteen chickens, and one duck. Shaun and his wife, Sember are committed to pursuing their dream of working in the studio arts, collaborating with other artist and eventually to create a center for community arts initiatives.
A Word From Shaun
At age five I was determined to be an artist. I went from door to door selling watercolor splashes to the neighbors. By the time I got through high school I was convinced it was impractical and nearly impossible to support myself let alone a family as an artist. A few years later on a hot summer day I picked up a paintbrush and haven’t put it down since. I immediately abandoned my pursuit of a business degree and started painting interior murals. Shortly thereafter I found myself in Austin Texas as a sign painters apprentice. After learning some key things during my apprenticeship I teamed up with artist and muralist Isaac Brown. We hustled for work bartering paintings and murals for food, bar tabs and a lifetime supply of mocha’s. This is where I found what would become a long standing and crucial friendship with my mentor and fellow muralist Doug Jaques.
Sometime later I relocated to Minneapolis to start a commercial painting business specializing in high end decorative painting and commercial murals. A year later I met my wife Sember and future daughter Manessah. Nine months after our wedding we had twin boys. We now have five, four of them three and under. Despite the adversity my wife and I have still hung onto the vision of working as a studio artist. During those years of hustling to survive as an artist I never imagined I would find myself married with five kids and still painting. My wife is the credit as the one who has relentlessly pursued this dream despite the pleas from others for me to hang it up and get a “real job”. Thanks to providence and the support of my wife we are now ready to release our first body of studio work.
A Word From His Wife, Sember
A few years ago, we left a prosperous business in order for Shaun to work more on his fine art. An established artist already he can paint a killer faux finish and any kind of mural. But God created Shaun as an ‘artist’, not a Faux finisher. So, here we are attempting to take steps more towards the studio and less towards the mass produced end of paint.
Eric Liddle a missionary, much to everyone’s criticism, left his mission to run. When pushed he said that God made him fast and when he ran he felt God’s pleasure. When Shaun paints our household feels God’s pleasure.
Despite the chaos, stress, children, and troubled finances, Shaun has stood by his convictions and grown as an artist in ways I never dreamed of and has continued to create works of art that I have a hard time letting go of (until the bills come, of course). I couldn’t be more proud of him, but despite his amazing talent as an artist, where he truly shines is as a husband and father.
The Technique
My technique is nothing necessarily new. It is something I learned over years of hard work combining a number of techniques. Creating the right surface for a painting has always been a topic for research and trial and error. I have learned that I prefer wood panels prepared with a mixture of wood glue and gesso instead of the traditional oil grounds and animal skin glues. I start with a concept and create it by collaging found images from a random array of sources. I then sketch it out with a color wash on the prepared panel. I then build up successive layers of glazes over a realized form painted in neutral colors. I crucially learned to treat color as a final realization to be separated from form. In this way I emulate the masters. However, I am also interested in atmosphere and the manipulation of space. As such my forms ebb and flow in layered spaces of abstraction and realized form. The consistency of breaking the painting up in successive frames is influenced both by my one time mentor as well as the digital age that seems to use this technique so proficiently in digital art. I enjoy the irony of using photographed images to create a composition and redeem their frivolousness in creating something sacred. I also enjoy the irony that digital art has informed and influenced traditional painting and technique. I consider it a strength to be informed by technology while preserving the essentials of tradition. However a friend once commented that the layered patterns and framed images seemed to lend itself to the idea of multiple realities interacting in some way with one another. I thought this was real insightful and I do consider that a probability with our understanding of metaphysics along side of religious creeds from the beginning of time. Einstein and Jesus have some things in common after all.