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ABOUT ME
I, John Jensen, started working with my the family painting business, Lauritz Jensen Decorators, in the summers starting in 1985, continuing until I graduated from high school in 1987, then joining the business full time. After 10 years, I enrolled at the Illinois Institute of Art in Schaumburg, painting with my father during the day and going to school at night. After earning a bachelor of fine arts degree in 1999, I was hired by Motorola, spending six years designing user interface graphics, animations and simulations for cellular phones. In 2005, I left Motorola to take a position with the Sears Holdings Corporation as the promotions manager for sears.com and kmart.com. After a year and a half, I was no longer happy sitting behind a computer all day and decided to go back to my roots and open my own painting business. In 2011, I put the painting business on hold due to a struggling economy and moved to Spring Green Wisconsin to work at Frank Lloyd Wright's personal home and studio named Taliesin. I spent 7 years working at Taliesin and picked up a couple new trade skills while being there. As the economy seems to on the rise in 2018 I decided to return to 4th Generation Painting LLC full time.
THE GENERATIONS
In 1906 Peter Wilstead Jensen, my great grandfather, came to the United States from Denmark. He settled in Racine, Wisconsin and in 1907 he started a painting and wallpapering business.
His son Lauritz Jensen, my grandfather, learned the trade from him but spent several years as an officer in the Salvation Army. In 1955, Lauritz resumed painting under his own name Lauritz Jensen Decorators based in Chicago, Illinois. In 1965, Lauritz passed the trade on to his son's Peter, Richard & David.
Peter William Jensen, my father, and his brothers continued to run the Palatine-based business as Lauritz Jensen Decorators, establishing an outstanding reputation for doing high quality work. Peter's sons and daughter Robert, James, Diana and I, naturally picked up the trade, making us the fourth generation of Jensen painters. My brother Robert maintains Lauritz Jensen Decorators in the Palatine area today.
It was 1985, when I, John Jensen started working for my father. In 1999, I took a break for 7 years to work in corporate America. In 2006, I wanted to work for myself and missed being a laborer so I started 4th Generation Decorating Inc. to continue the Jensen tradition of delivering reliable high quality painting and wallpapering service. When the economy started to crash in 2007 it was a struggle to get work. People simply didn't hire contractors at that time. Therefore, in 2011 I put the painting business on hold and moved to the small town of Spring Green Wisconsin. There I spent 7 years working on Frank Lloyd Wright's personal home and studio named "Taliesin". As people got to know me locally and the economy picked up, now 2017, I resumed the painting business here in Spring Green as 4th Generation Painting LLC.
