Larry Groff

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Larry Groff has exhibited in a number of venues nationally, including California, NYC, New York, Boston Massachusetts, Missouri, and Vermont. Groff received his BFA in painting at the Massachusetts College of Art in 1988, and his M.F.A. in painting at Boston University in 1993. He also attended the Yale University Summer School of Art and Music at Norfolk in 1986. See his full CVfor details.

Groff has additionally been the owner and editor of the Painting Perceptions website (paintingperceptions.com) for the past 16 years and has interviewed many prominent contemporary representational painters around the world as well as many emerging artists nationally. This site also features videos, reviews, opinion essays, and more by contributing writers.

In my latest solo exhibition, Flipped, I delve into my uncharted territories of imagination and abstraction, a departure from my three-decade engagement with direct painting from nature. My recent work presents a world where the rules of perspective are upended, the boundaries of style are reimagined, and the familiar gives way to the unexpected.

Drawing inspiration from the patterned spaces of Vuillard, the nuanced color harmony and spaces in Indian miniatures, and the fractured grids of Paul Klee, my work is informed by a rich visual vocabulary taken from many points in art history. I employ an intuitive process—gestures, accidents, and erasures coalesce into form and meaning that echoes the sensibilities of Mark Tobey’s “write-writing” or Gregory Gillespie’s “rorschaching” approach. The freedom of this gestural activity can often suggest new compositional possibilities and surprises that transcend expected illusionistic elements. This synthesis of disparate influences—from Bruegel to Poussin, from Mexican folk art to Roman Antiquity; whatever art source might best follow my imagination and the needs of the painting.

I try to resist singular interpretations of the work and instead offers a number of pathways to visual poetics, inviting the viewer to construct their own meaning. In a world overwhelmed by turmoil, my art aims to be a visual sanctuary of solace and wonder.

CV for Larry Groff

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Please view the Artist’s Website at larrygroff.com/