Vulnerability, landscapes, and long hours: meet muralist Maxine Lemieux

Provided by Maxine Lemieux

Sudburian-turned-Torontonian, Franco-Ontarian-Métis multidisciplinary artist Maxine Lemieux is bringing her fantastical world-building aesthetic home for Up Here 9.

She was kind enough to take five and tell us a bit about this mural and what drives her!

How did you decide to pursue art?

I feel like you don't decide to become an artist, you just are an artist. It's just something you have to do. It’s creating, putting yourself out there, wanting people to see and experience the things you're making. For them to interpret it, to love it, to hate it, or for them to think nothing of it. It's being vulnerable with people, being vulnerable with the community you're sharing with. It's a beautiful thing.

I don't know, it's just so much fun being an artist. Why wouldn't you want to be one?

Provided by Maxine Lemieux

What inspired this piece?

This piece means I get to put something out into Sudbury, my hometown, where I grew up. It means I get to be a part of Up Here and leave something permanently downtown. I remember when I was 13 or 14 and I first saw people painting walls, and I thought it was the coolest thing. And now I get to be a part of that, it's just been full circle. This piece for me is a landscape, it's a scene I want people to feel like they are a part of—they want to be there and they totally can be there.

What do you think about while you’re painting?

For me, because it's my piece, I can keep working on it till it's done—nonstop without eating or sleeping. But for other people, that's what I have to think about, of who's coming today and who's helping out. We start really early, and we go on until we're dead. Even today, Pierre was like, “I'm feeling imprisoned, I need to go home.” So we have to call it then. I’m also just feeling grateful and honoured to have so much help and so many lovely volunteers. So, I'm thinking of them while I'm painting.

I'm in a mindset of being really excited for my future and feeling like this is the beginning of something big. I’m thinking about how this is my first big wall, and how much life I have yet to live, and how many other things I’ll get to experience that are just as amazing as this.

What do you listen to while you work?

I've been dealing with a speaker that refuses to charge, so we've been mostly in silence. But, I always have a song stuck in my head. I talk a lot with the volunteers, whoever's helping me on the lifts, and it's just been a lot of fun meeting them and chatting with them about life and art and all sorts of things. But if I did have a speaker that was working, I would totally be listening to my summer playlist, which is mostly stuff like Indigo De Souza.

Provided by Maxine Lemieux