Song for George
Audio coming
About
Larry Hilburger.
Self-taught oil painter, working since the late 1970s.
300+
Paintings
40+
Years
Oil
On canvas
Larry was born in Buffalo, NY in 1954. He took basic art at Cleveland Hill High School, where he enjoyed watercolor in particular, and graduated in 1972. After high school, painting went on hold while he played drums in different bands.
Eventually he sold his drum set to get a car so he could get to work. He had already painted once, on a canvas his sister Pam had started (Material Expansion, 1978), with her leftover paint still underneath. Years later, needing a creative outlet, he found his brother Rick’s brushes and oil paints down in his parents’ basement on South Huxley. The night before he started painting, he dreamed of “blueish creatures flying by a body of water near some ancient ruins,” and worked the dream into his first complete painting, Prehistoric Nightmare. He calls it “the painting that really inspired every painting in the future.”
Over four decades later he has produced more than three hundred works. He paints without formal training, guided by curiosity, instinct, and perseverance. He describes the work as abstract landscapes, or even dreamscapes, and a heavy dose of geometrics.
He paints today from his home in Angola, NY, five minutes down the road from Bennett Beach on Lake Erie.
With the work
Larry, with the work.
Read on for the longer story
His life in photographs · Gallery letters · Still painting
Throughout the years
Larry, through his life.
Childhood · 1954–1968
The early years.
Larry grew up in a large Buffalo family that spent its summers outdoors. The Hilburgers rented cabins at Point Breeze on Lake Erie for a week at a time, and visited cousins who lived within walking distance. Yearly family vacations took them most often to Allegany State Park, where on one hike they startled a black bear that turned and chased them back through the woods. Other trips took them to Long Beach in Ontario, the Adirondacks, the Thousand Islands, Lake Huron, the Catskills, the 1964 New York World’s Fair, Florida, and one trip across the Atlantic to England.
Before they settled on Manhattan Avenue in Buffalo, the family rented a place a block over on Marigold Street, from friends. They bought the Manhattan house when Larry was around four or five, and later moved to South Huxley, the family home for the rest of his childhood.
Marginalia · the rats under the slab
Around seven or eight, on Manhattan, Larry told his parents he was going to a friend’s house. That was all they knew. He and Larry Sharp, who lived a few houses down a dead-end street, walked down to Central Park Plaza. Plaza on the left, a construction site with a field by the railroad tracks on the right. They crawled through some big pipes, then found a huge slab of cement with a crawl space under it (the ground wasn’t level). Larry shimmied in first, lying flat to fit; his friend followed. They went farther and farther in. It was getting dark when he heard the squealing and realized it was a family of rats: babies and parents. He turned and shouted to move. His friend wasn’t moving fast enough; eventually they did get out, took a minute or two. Scared him good.
He never crawled under another cement thing. But they did still play on the railroad tracks, flattening pennies, without his parents knowing.
When the family lived on Manhattan Avenue, he helped his older brother Derek with the Buffalo Evening News paper route, and Derek would buy him a Pepsi and a bag of chips at one of the corner stores afterward. There were a lot of corner stores back then: glass-bottle Pepsi out of a machine for about a dime, chips for ten cents, a full candy bar for a nickel, a postage stamp for four cents, the first-class rate from August 1958 until January 1963. Money, Larry says, was worth something. He collected stamps because his father did (Edwin had gotten Mike going on it first), and traded the kid cards the stores sold: spook cards with monsters, cowboys (Davy Crockett, Jesse James, Billy the Kid), music stars (Fabian, Bobby Darin, Paul Anka), and Beatles cards in 1963–64, when the stores were full of Fab Four stuff.
The family went to church together on Sundays in the early years; in later years they went mostly just for Easter and Christmas. A lot of the group photos from this time come from those occasions, when everyone was dressed up.
He has fond memories of his parents taking the kids to the Zoo, Akron Park, Niagara Falls, Crystal Beach (the Lake Erie amusement park reachable by ferry from Buffalo, closed in 1989 after a century of operation), Sherkston Beach with the quarry, Beaver Island State Park, Fantasy Island, and watching his dad fish in the Niagara River in the early evenings.
On May 1, 1967, his oldest brother Michael J. Hilburger was killed in Vietnam at twenty-one. Larry was twelve. He came home from Cleveland Hill Elementary that day, opened the door, and saw his father with a strange look on his face. Larry asked if the tropical fish had died. His father said no, it was much worse, and told him, “Mike is dead.” Larry described it as fight or flight. He ran to the basement, his father followed, and they held each other and cried. The family was devastated.
Their mother Rosa was heartbroken. Canada was just over the Peace Bridge from Buffalo, a few miles down the road, and Mike could have crossed and joined the draft dodgers, but Rosa had encouraged him to do what was his duty, eight months before the Tet Offensive would turn American public opinion against the war. She blamed herself for the rest of her life. Larry remembers hearing her sob for years afterward, sometimes while folding laundry, sometimes alone in her room.
Marginalia · Mike’s life in photographs
Mike, before
Mike, soldier
After
In the news
Marginalia · the Vietnam Letters section
The framing the Buffalo Evening News printed above its Vietnam Letters series, in Mike’s own paper:
Behind the headlines of the day’s major battles in Vietnam is the untold story of the day-to-day life of the hundreds of men from Western New York. Here, in their own words, is that story, to help bridge the gap in time, miles and experiences from jungles, mountains and danger of Vietnam to the prosperous, peaceful United States. The News invites you to submit excerpts from the letters you receive from husband, son or friend in Vietnam with a picture of the writer. Pictures will be returned upon request. Address all correspondence to The Buffalo Evening News c/o Vietnam Letters, Buffalo, N.Y., 14240.
Rosa most likely submitted Mike’s letter to the paper.
Around the same time, Rosa survived a near-fatal car accident: a tracheotomy, broken ribs that damaged her lungs. The children, having just lost Mike, were terrified of losing her too. Years later she would tell them what she remembered most from that time: their faces, the fear on them, and how she tried to smile through the tubes and everything, holding their hands.
Rosa's accident
Soon after, Larry was given a snare drum, and not long after that a full kit.
Teen years
Out into the world.1969–1972
He attended Cleveland Hill High School, swam on the swim team, and played drums in a band called Red Witch (with George Litz on guitar) that performed at their school dance. Larry went to New York City in June 1972 to receive a Guru’s “so-called” Knowledge; then in November of that year, at eighteen, he travelled to India with his sister Pam and his brother Derek, where they spent nearly a month with the followers of Guru Maharaj Ji.
Music · 1969–1972
He loved music, kept a massive record collection, and went to many rock concerts over the years; his first was Led Zeppelin’s October 30, 1969 show at Kleinhans Music Hall, the band’s sold-out Buffalo debut. Larry was fifteen. He graduated from Cleveland Hill in June 1972.
“I was big with the records.”
Larry, on the family he grew up in:
I lived in an artistic, musical and creative family. My older brother Rick wrote songs, played guitar, sang, recorded music, and oil paints, making beautiful works of art. My other older brother Derek played keyboards/organ in a popular band called the Magic Ring that opened for many top-notch rock groups, too many to mention. The rest of the family has talent too.
Among the headliners Magic Ring opened for: Deep Purple, Cactus, Alice Cooper, Canned Heat, Fleetwood Mac, Uriah Heep, and The Doors after Jim Morrison’s death in July 1971.
Young adult
On his own.1972–1989
After India, he moved often over the next two decades: an apartment near Buffalo State College in 1973 (jam sessions with friends, a lot of partying, a landlord on his case, and eventually an ant infestation that drove him out), then on Manhattan Avenue through 1974 (renting from his parents); Denver, Colorado in 1975 with his brother Derek; and a summer at Westhampton Beach, NY with his sister Pam in 1976. In 1977 he lived in Houston, Texas with friends Rocky, Bob, and Don; that same year the four drove home together, taking the long way through the Great Smoky Mountains.
Three songs, 1974
Recorded in 1974 with friends Herbie, Bob, and Jack in an early band that hadn’t yet given itself a name, Larry on drums and synthesizer on Fool’s Love. The four had a great time playing together, even if just for a short stretch before Larry’s car accident later that year.
Audio restoration in progress.
Four Winds Blow
Audio coming
Fool’s Love
Audio coming
Through most of the 1970s and into the early 1980s, Larry was a follower of Guru Maharaj Ji and the Divine Light Mission. He had received what the Mission called “the knowledge” on June 19, 1972, his mother’s birthday, on the second floor of a building in New York City. The Mission was midway through an extraordinary American boom: from roughly six US followers in 1971 to around fifty thousand by 1973.
Marginalia · the Knowledge session
Larry remembers a long indoctrination session: each attendee had to commit to a vow of devotion to Guru Maharaj Ji before the Knowledge would be revealed. Someone else in the session had to leave for the bathroom and was told not to come back if she did. The Mahatma (the guru’s helper) went to each person one by one, revealing the Knowledge and pressing his fingers very hard against their eyes to show them the light. Maybe twenty people in the group that night; Larry didn’t count.
He was seventeen. In his own words: “I did have an experience, and I don’t mean to sound crass, but I can have an experience picking my nose.”
In November 1973 part of the family (Edwin, Rosa, Larry, Mark, and Val) travelled to Houston for Millennium ’73, the Astrodome event billed as the beginning of “a thousand years of peace” and coordinated by the Chicago Seven’s Rennie Davis as the Mission’s US vice-president. Derek travelled separately. Larry’s parents had been planning to receive the Knowledge themselves. At a pre-Knowledge session in Buffalo beforehand, attendees were asked to be willing to give something up for the master; when Rosa was asked to be willing to give up her children, she walked out. “I’m not going to give up my children for the guru.” The Mission, Larry later understood, specifically wanted the younger ones.
The mid-1970s were a hard stretch. In 1974, sometime after midnight on the 198 in Buffalo, a car accident in his beloved Dodge Challenger took the car, a relationship, and the band that had recorded those three songs together. He was partying a lot, increasingly conflicted about his devotion to the master.
Marginalia · the night of the crash
Larry’s girlfriend was in the passenger seat. She hit her head; blood was coming down her face, so Larry got out of the car and flagged down a passing car to get her to a hospital, where she recovered. The Challenger didn’t. Not long after that the relationship was over, and Larry had to sell his drum set to afford a working car for his job. The set was a professional kit (two bass drums, four tom toms, two floor toms, five cymbals), and selling it meant the band, too, was over.
Denver · 1975
Denver, he liked. In 1975 he took a door-to-door encyclopedia sales job that gave him his first wheels. He started on foot, walking the neighborhoods, looking for cars in driveways (no car meant no one home) and swingsets in yards (kids meant parents who might buy). After a month he was doing well enough to be promoted to field manager: his own crew, his own car. The work came with travel, week-long sales runs out to Arizona, Nebraska, South Dakota, New Mexico. He earned a top-sales award one month, a briefcase, and eventually a trip to Hawaii. Then the company shut down its Denver operation and moved out of state. The Hawaii trip got reassigned to one of the regional managers. Larry never made it.
Larry, on what following Guru Maharaj Ji was like:
Within the Guru’s talks and organization there was a constant guilt trip of “You are in your mind,” like it’s a bad thing. You’re not to think for yourself; thoughts and efforts need to go towards the Knowledge and the Perfect Master. I call that a mind fuck.
By the late 1970s the grip had loosened; Larry went to a few more satsangs in 1979 and 1980, but the premie feeling didn’t last. Looking back now, he considers it a cult and the experience brainwashing. He has said that the many years of being told to follow the Perfect Master’s Agya (instructions), of Satsang (talks and indoctrination), Service (selfless actions to help the cause), Meditation (which the Guru hijacked), and Darshan (being in the presence of the Perfect Master or Guru and kissing his feet) and not to think for yourself did some damage. The devotees, Larry has said, were being taken advantage of. Many gave everything to him, even houses and cars. Not to mention their minds.
Larry agrees with Lakeshore’s posts on the ex-premie page:
Then years later Prem Rawat’s revisionism or changes took place within the cult which I believed was essentially Rawat’s idea, ostensibly for reasons related to, well… relatability. Most western premies welcomed the changes because they were ashamed of the optics of being in a cult, e.g., Arti (devotional song), foot kissing the lord, the Guru’s outfit with a gold crown, the dancing and so on, and rightfully so. Especially the mala dancing.
What turned those otherwise welcomed changes into something despicable was the big fat lie that devotees were responsible for creating those optics, and not the one person, Prem Rawat, who was singularly responsible for instilling and promoting them for an entire decade: “I’m the Perfect Master,” “And when you sing Arti, mean it!!”
Larry talks about people being taken advantage of, and he wanted to help with the facts. He spent years collecting and preserving documentation and materials from his time as a premie, sharing them online with ex-premie communities under the name hilltop. He has been recognized on an ex-premie page chronicling former members’ experiences. He loves his family, and any anger he has is from what he sees as the forces that tore at it: war, greed, lies, manipulation, and people used as pawns in someone else’s game.
Before he stopped, Friday nights mostly meant Central and Depot in Brocton, NY, then back to the family house on South Huxley. He calls those the “Brocton years.” He stopped drinking in late 1982 or early 1983, after a fight with a friend, and went to work at Freezer Queen not long after. That same year, he and his father bought an eight-acre Christmas tree farm in Java Center, NY with a stocked pond (1982–1989).
Java Center and homes · 1982–1989
To stock the pond, Larry and Edwin drove out to a hatchery with a big trash can and came back with a hundred small rainbow trout. Later, the two of them fished those same trout back out together, and Rosa cleaned and cooked them. Larry thinks there’s a home video somewhere of his mother cleaning the fish.
He had met Jan in 1980. They moved in together in late 1983, the upstairs of a two-family house on the East Side of Buffalo (1983–1986); Jan’s grandmother lived below. He started oil painting there, working through his older brother Rick’s oil supplies left in the South Huxley basement. Rick is a painter too (see his work). In 1986 he bought a house on Garner Avenue, off Grant Street on the West Side of Buffalo (1986–1989), with a wood-burning fireplace, an art studio, a pool table, and a ping-pong table. The neighborhood had great restaurants and pizzerias.
A brother who stayed
One of Larry's older brothers had received the Knowledge before Larry did and was a devotee throughout that era, and most likely even now. (Larry doesn't think the word devotee is still in use.) Larry has said of him: "He is a beautiful person, with love in his heart."
"I've got a lot to be thankful for, and things were getting better."
Buffalo · 1987
In 1987 Larry and Jan split up (they’re close friends today). Soon after, a friend named Bill Norick brought a woman named Diane over to the Garner house one evening. They all got along, and before the night was out Larry and Diane had exchanged numbers. The phone calls that followed went on for hours. Diane had a farm in Elma with her sons. They started dating; she had doubts (she had a houseful of sons to raise), but Larry didn’t mind. They got serious anyway.
The first paintings · 1978–1989
The painting practice began here. In 1978 he had painted once, on a canvas his sister Pam had started: Material Expansion, with her leftover paint still underneath. Seven years later, working through his brother Rick’s oil supplies left in the South Huxley basement, he completed Prehistoric Nightmare from a dream of “blueish creatures flying by a body of water near some ancient ruins.” He has called it the painting that really inspired every painting in the future. Most of the dreamscapes that followed came in a single year-long burst in 1986.
1986 · a year of dreamscapes
Westfield
Settled in.1989–2006
In 1989 Larry left Buffalo for a farm in Westfield, NY with Diane and her sons. He stayed seventeen years: work across the road at Sugar Hill Golf Course, and two daughters of his own born here. He has called this stretch the best of his life.
By 1989 Larry was ready to leave Buffalo. He and Diane talked one night about what they wanted in a place: ponds, beautiful surroundings. Larry had been listening to self-help tapes that told him to write down what he wanted, and he had. A week or two later, Diane called: her brother Dave was selling his property out in Westfield, NY. Larry drove out to look. Forty-five thousand dollars, a twenty-eight-acre grape farm, three ponds, an old farmhouse, a barn. Everything on the list. He sold the Garner house and the Java Center tree farm to fund the purchase, and the deal went through that year; later, a mobile home was added to the property. It was a timing thing: eight or nine months to coordinate the closings so the Westfield money landed when he needed it, with a good attorney helping string it all together. When the day came (late fall, almost early winter), friends pitched in to move him out. Roger had a moving company; he came with Rick Clark and Mark, and the four of them packed everything into the truck and drove it out to the farm together.
He worked many jobs across those years: a pizza restaurant (“I made the best pizzas”), Chef Henry’s deli and door-to-door encyclopedia sales in Denver (1975), a furniture moving company in Houston, Westinghouse and Arcata Graphics in Cheektowaga, a pickle factory in Cheektowaga for a few days, foreman at Freezer Queen, delivery driver for U‑Need‑A Delivery, Sugar Hill Golf Course in Westfield (1992–2009), and a few other positions.
Marginalia · the pickle factory only got him for a few shifts
In Larry’s words:
I’d start second shift. They’d put me on this line, a conveyor with cucumbers going by, washed, sliced. Under that, another conveyor with glass jars. My job was to grab the cucumber sticks and stick them in the jars. Eight hours of that, and on our lunch break they’d shut the line down to clean it; sticky and sloppy from the cucumbers, seeds everywhere. Honest to god, just standing there, I’d swear I still saw things moving. I looked at the other workers and noticed they looked like zombies from doing this job. Some had been doing this for many years. I felt miserable, had a cold. Came back the next day, wasn’t into it. Did another shift. And then I couldn’t do it any more. So much for working at the pickle factory. When I left, I left smelling like a human pickle.
Sugar Hill · 1992
Sugar Hill Golf Course was a field when Larry moved to Westfield, across the road from his house near Lake Erie. It had once been a golf course called “The Vineyard,” and around 1992 Randy Trumpler bought it to bring it back to life. Larry walked over and asked if he could help. He helped Trumpler rebuild the course, then worked there for seventeen years through three owners: Trumpler, then the Delaneys, then Greg and Pat.
Dad · 1991 & 1994
His daughters Christina and Kim were born in 1991 and 1994. The day Christina was born, he got to hold her first, in a rocking chair he still vividly remembers. Kim came out with a full head of thick, dark hair, which was the first thing he noticed. He calls this stretch the best of his life: the Westfield farm, two beautiful daughters, and work just across the road at Sugar Hill Golf Course. When asked about being a father, he comes back to the same word: fortunate.
Paintings · 1990–2006
The Westfield years coincided with a steady output. Forever Blowing Bubbles dates from this chapter (1991, the year Christina was born); it shows up in the photographs at the top of this page: propped on the upside-down stool he used as an easel, and again being touched up almost three decades later.
Across the Westfield years
From the archive.
Selected exhibitions
- 1993
- Imaginations · Solo · Adams Art Gallery, Dunkirk, NY
- 1994
- Biennial Art Show · Group · Octagon Gallery, Westfield, NY
- 1995
- Wired · Group · Hallways Art Center, Buffalo, NY
- 1996
- Biennial Art Show · Group · Patterson Library, Westfield, NY
Coursework
In 1987, two years into his oil practice, Larry took a summer art class at Buffalo State College. He made one collage there.
Gallery letters.
For years Larry sent his work to galleries and competitions. Some politely declined; others wanted originals he wasn’t ready to part with. He had intentions of selling prints instead but was always so focused on the painting part that he never got to the point of selling until now. He kept the letters.
1991 The A.B. Closson Jr. Co. · Cincinnati, OH
March 19, 1991
Dear Mr. Hilburger:
We are returning your slides and material with grateful thanks. We do appreciate having them, and do know that we have your name in our files for perhaps something in the future.
Sincerely,
Phyllis M. Maxson, Director
Art Gallery
1991 Arthur A. Kaplan Co. · New York, NY
April 1, 1991
Dear Mr. Hilburger:
Thank you very much for your submission of the enclosed four slides depicting your work.
Though most attractive, and professionally rendered, unfortunately, we do not use this type of subject matter, style, or handling at the present time.
With our thanks we return all material submitted and wish you continued success with your work.
Sincerely yours,
Reid A. Kaplan
1991 Burchfield Art Gallery · handwritten
September 17, 1991
Dear Larry,
Your art work has excellent potential however at this time it is not what we’re handling right now. Keep up the good work!
Sincerely,
Larry Johnson
Burchfield Art Gallery
1992 Frank J. Miele Gallery · New York, NY
July 7, 1992
Dear Larry,
Thank you for sharing your work with us.
Although you are clearly a talented artist, I feel that your work does not quite fit the focus of the gallery, and consequently I am returning your photographs.
Good luck.
1992 Agora Gallery · SoHo, NYC
July 23, 1992
Dear Larry Hilburger,
Thank you for your interest in Agora Gallery. Although you are not able to join the gallery at this time, we remain interested in representing your work in New York City. We look forward to the possibility of promoting your career at a future date. Please feel free to contact us again, regarding sales and exhibitions.
We are looking forward to hearing from you.
Cordially,
Michael Hunt Stolbach
Director
1993 National Endowment for the Arts · Visual Artists Fellowship
September 1993
Dear Mr. Hilburger:
Your application for a Visual Artists Fellowship has been reviewed by a panel from the visual arts field, the National Council on the Arts, and by the Chairman, and I regret that it was not among those recommended for funding. This year 4,526 applications were reviewed in the areas of Other Genres, Painting, and Works on Paper, and 110 artists will be receiving fellowships.
I understand that this decision will be a disappointment for you; however, I do encourage you to apply again in the future. Our fellowship panels change each year, so any future application you may wish to make will be reviewed by a completely different panel. It is not uncommon for an artist who was not recommended for a fellowship one year to be recommended for one after reapplying another year.
Sincerely,
Rosalyn Alter
Director, Visual Arts Program
1993 Aaron Ashley Inc. · Publishers of Fine Pictures since 1929
October 14, 1993
Dear Mr. Hilburger:
Thank you very much for your letter and slides.
We find your work attractive, interesting and well painted, but regret that we can not consider it for reproduction. We feel that it just misses for our purposes.
We truly appreciate your giving us the opportunity to consider your work and wish you much success.
Sincerely,
Philip D. Ginsberg
1993 Guildhall, Inc. · Fort Worth, TX
October 28, 1993
Dear Mr. Hilburger:
Thank you for choosing Guildhall for possible publication of your art work. We always appreciate the opportunity to evaluate an artist’s potential for marketing.
Your work is presented in a very professional manner and is certainly considered from a quality standpoint.
At this time, we are not able to take on additional artists until we have implemented our plans for the new artists we recently signed. Consequently, we can only keep your letter and copies of your paintings for our files.
Sincerely,
John M. Thompson, III
1993 Bruce McGaw Graphics · Publishing
December 23, 1993
Dear Mr. Hilburger,
We are in receipt of your most recent submission of your slides illustrating your oil paintings.
After a careful review, we have decided not to pursue the work for publication at this time. Although your submission shows a great deal of talent on your part, we are not actively looking for this style of work and subject matter to be a part of our 1994 publishing roster.
Thank you for considering Bruce McGaw Graphics as a publisher and our best to you on your continued success.
Sincerely,
Martin B. Lawler
Director of Purchasing and Acquisitions
1994 Boston Corporate Art · Boston, MA
January 14, 1994
Dear Larry,
Thank you for submitting your slides to Boston Corporate Art. We have reviewed your work, and although we find your work extremely interesting, I’m afraid these slides would be difficult to place for a majority of our corporate client market.
Nevertheless, when you have a new body of work completed, we would like to encourage you to send slides and an updated biography for further review.
Sincerely,
Beth Conrad
Assistant to the Gallery Director
Front Line · San Diego, CA · undated
Dear Artist:
Thank you for submitting samples of your art work which we have carefully reviewed. At the present time, however, we do not feel there is a need in our market for the styles of the subjects shown in your samples. Therefore, we are returning your samples. Please feel free to submit more work at any time as we are constantly publishing new works.
We wish you success and again appreciate your time and effort in submitting your work to us.
Sincerely,
Todd Halle
Creative Director
Viridian Gallery · New York, NY · undated, handwritten
Thank you for the opportunity to see the slides.
Best of luck.
From fellow artists.
"Larry Hilburger's paintings are professionally created by a true and dedicated artist. His ability to use color is extraordinary. Larry Hilburger is in every sense of the word a professional artist: dedicated, gifted, and most of all the inner self with the drive to create wonderful works of art."
James C. Litz
self-taught primitive naive artist
Buffalo, NY · March 10, 1992
"Your painting Forever Blowing Bubbles is magnificent! I honestly think your artwork has great commercial potential and appeal. I've sent you a few of my art prints. Let's keep in touch."
Gil Veda
painter, composer, and singer
Nashville, Tennessee
Recent years
Still painting.
While formal showings became infrequent in the late 1990s, the painting continued. Three decades of weekly studio practice produced the bulk of the catalog: hundreds of works accumulated across studio and storage, sold occasionally, mostly kept. The body of work grew steadily through the 2000s and 2010s, outside public view.
Black & white geometrics · 2009–2011
At 71, he is still painting. The catalog spans four decades and is still growing.
Recent work
His father Edwin had one piece of advice for him: stick to your guns. The painting, week after week, is what he has done with it. Some galleries passed on the work, some wanted originals Larry wasn’t ready to give up, and the painting kept going regardless. He paints for himself.
"It's a good feeling when there is a new blank canvas in front of me. I derive a lot of happiness from painting. More than ever, I want to paint positive and uplifting works of art. I aspire to create paintings that help make people feel good when looking at them."
Outside the studio
A life off the canvas.
He sees his daughters and his grandson Nova Daniel whenever he can.
See the work.