Stops Along the Way- Paintings by Bob Larsen

McGowan Fine Art announces “Stops Along the Way” featuring the paintings of Bob Larsen. The show will run from March 1 through April 1, with an artist’s reception on March 11 from 5 to 7 PM. This show is a benefit for Canterbury Shaker Village and is free and open to the public.

Bob Larsen is a noted local artist and former lawyer. His work has been featured most recently at the Sharon Arts Center, but also at the Sulloway Gallery in Concord, NH and the Forbes Galleries in New York City. As a lawyer Bob was in charge of the art acquisition and exhibition program at Sulloway & Hollis Law Firm where he was able to give outlet to his creative side by curating. In the past 15 years his passion to paint crystallized into something more than a hobby. A four month sabbatical and the inevitable retirement gave him the large chunks of time needed to develop his artistic skills.

Larsen has been recognized in the past for capturing the iconic structures of the state: the Capitol Dome, the buildings of Canterbury Shaker Village. For this show he revisits many of these icons but puts a twist on them. He bridges past and present by incorporating the contemporary and historic landscape. In ‘Benning Wentworth House” he has included the shadowy silhouettes of the Naval Shipyard cranes towering over the dignified yellow mansion. In “Lempster Wind Farm” the Washington Town Hall steeple vies with the stately wind towers. Some of the other icons he depicts are Strawberry Banke, Canterbury Shaker Village, the Bridges House and Gould Hill Orchard in Concord and the Cog Railway.

Mr. Larsen’s paintings are readily recognizable by their strong shadows and frequent use of reflections in windows. Attention to detail is his hallmark. In “Ministry” his close up of an historic window in the Ministry Building of Canterbury Shaker Village depicts the distorted images of other buildings, distant landscape and the shadowy image of a bowl and ewer sitting on the sill- effectively rendering three different worlds. “These paintings take me quite a bit of time to work out” says Larsen. “They might take a month a piece and I am a ruthless cropper. The painting generally starts off quite a bit larger than the finished piece. As I finish up I start to distill it down to the final composition.”