Bio
Bio
Bio
Paalu’s phantasmagorical vision is brought to life with digital wizardry and personal stories.
He enlivens his lead drawings digitally by adapting photos to his vision, experimenting with hundreds of images.
All photos are captured by him, delivering consistent personality to his work.
The highly personal imagery leans toward natural iconography — yet personalized and renewed in his sharp and color-intense realm.
He mainly draws inspiration from his life, besides non-fictive literature concerning philosophy, autobiography, civilizational- and economic history.
Paalu’s phantasmagorical vision is brought to life with digital wizardry and personal stories.
He enlivens his lead drawings digitally by adapting photos to his vision, experimenting with hundreds of images.
All photos are captured by him, delivering consistent personality to his work.
The highly personal imagery leans toward natural iconography — yet personalized and renewed in his sharp and color-intense realm.
He mainly draws inspiration from his life, besides non-fictive literature concerning philosophy, autobiography, civilizational- and economic history.
Story
His work evokes a sensation he experienced in early childhood.
A mahogany framed Dufex print of HC Andersen’s adventures stood by his bed.
The bedtime illustration was gloomy, but the Dufex foil reflected light, illuminating a dream of countless intricate creatures.
Lit by a dim bed light, he embarked on a profound bedside adventure inside the moving painting, all while his parents were asleep.
The parentless journey was frightening, yet a journey led by a child’s purest fascination.
An adult might question a print’s ability to spark a vivid venture.
But one forgets to appreciate the intense childhood quests once summoned by pure imagination.
Most adults experience their boundless imagination in their sleep.
Paalu’s work is an attempt to actualize it.
Yet it isn’t drawn from his childhood, nor from his sleep, but from the moment he lets himself be.
Story
His work evokes a sensation experienced in his early childhood.
A mahogany framed Dufex print of HC Andersen’s adventures stood by his bed.
The bedtime illustration was gloomy, but the Dufex foil reflected light, illuminating a dream of countless intricate creatures.
Lit by a dim bed light, he embarked on a profound bedside adventure, all while his parents were asleep.
The parentless journey was frightening, yet a journey led by a child’s purest fascination.
An adult might question a print’s ability to spark a vivid venture.
But one forgets to appreciate the intense childhood quests once summoned by pure imagination.
Most adults experience their boundless imagination in their sleep.
Paalu’s work is an attempt to actualize it.
Yet it isn’t drawn from his childhood, nor from his sleep, but from the moment he lets himself be.
HC Andersen Dufex Print by Janet and Anne Grahame Johnstone
Background
Paalu was born in Denmark in 1996 and raised in Nuuk, Greenland.
He has lived in Michigan and Chicago.
He graduated business school in Copenhagen in 2016.
Then worked on a fishing ship for 3 years.
He has lived on over 20 addresses in an age of 24.
Paalu has never gone to art school.
He was brought up with digital brushes at his fingertips, as he began to manipulate photography when he was 12.
Digitalizing his drawings never occurred to him, until he felt limited by physical coloration and his poor abilities with physical mediums.
At the age of 18 in Stevensville, MI - he drew a sketch and scanned it to his computer.
He slowly experimented with colors, layers, and opacity.
Then he made a serious advance while he went to business school in Copenhagen.
Paalu was painting ‘Look’ (2015) on his computer, when he found the plain colors in need of texture.
To solve this, he blended pictures with the initial coloring, using photos of soil, captured on a musk ox hunting trip in a Greenlandic fjord.
It inspired a cascade of photo manipulation, allowing limitless opportunity to assemble his imagination using his experiences as material.