Local artist entices the senses
By Chelsea Chambers Photography Kimberlee Miller
Jerusha Lauren’s brightly colored art is both eye-catching and stimulating. She brings surrealism to life with her soft lines and intricate detailing. Jerusha’s art looks like something that leaped right out of a dream and onto the page. Her ability to capture such fantastic scenes is absolutely enviable.
Originally from Moscow, Idaho, Jerusha spent about six years in Romania with her family. “We worked in orphanages and gypsy villages, building homes for people and helping them get fed,” she explains. “I traveled all over Europe; being able to experience more than I ever could have imagined.”
They returned to Boise to be with family and that is when Jerusha began delved into the world of artistic creation. She took AP art classes at Boise High and studied with the National Art Society. Her education and travel experiences have allowed Jerusha to run with her imaginative ideas and, in turn, combine the world of fiction and art.
Her art work is designed to form a larger narrative and each piece has a fictional story attached to it that is rooted in her memories. By using this narrative approach, she is able to combine the truly fantastic world of dream-like surrealism with its natural place in the world. “I want my work to make people ask questions. I want [them] to wonder what it means or why it is the way it is.” From pigs in tea cups and a band of animals on a road trip to fish floating in and out of houses and rabbits in planes, Jerusha has opened a portal into the whimsical world that lies beyond our own.
We all seek ways to hold on to our fantasies—to find the link between our dreams and reality. To maintain that sense of wonder and imagination. And it all becomes possible in the world of Jerusha Lauren. “My biggest inspiration is finding happiness and in what I get to experience in the every-day moments.”
Her work is truly larger-than-life—so it’s no surprise that she was appointed to do a mural for The STIL’s new location. Her art can also be found at the electrical box on Grove and 16th. She has made appearances in the Boise Art Museum, Valley Vision Magazine, and the Flying M Coffeehouse in Boise.
Jerusha’s art brings feelings of nostalgia and embodies the essence of imagination in a way that inspires you to question the world around you. Enticed by soft lines and bright colors, it seems that the world can’t get enough of her work and we will undoubtedly be seeing a lot more of Ms. Lauren in the coming years. Already a sought-after and commissioned artist, Jerusha hopes to make this her day-job. “It’s already booming more than I thought it would and I will continue working my hardest to make it my full-time career.”
Soft lines and bright colors will entice your senses and invoke a sense of imagination that many of us may have lost along the way.
Find more of Jerusha’s work on her website at www.jerushalauren.com or her Instagram @jerusha.m_art.
