Larry Horowitz : New Work

Ever since Larry Horowitz first saw California years ago, its unique and varied scenery has been a favorite subject for his art. “It’s so different from the east,” Larry explains. “In California you can see distance. Its bare, rolling hills, sparsely dotted with small clumps of trees, create sharp edges and precise shapes, while in the Northeast the hills are covered with a continuous carpet of trees, blurring edges and melding shapes into a large amorphous form.” Even the trees themselves are different: “In the east, size equals age; in California the oldest trees are often small, twisted, and wonderfully gnarled.” Most striking of all is California’s light, especially in the late afternoon when sky and clouds take on a multi-colored, luminous glow that is unlike anywhere else in the world.

Horowitz should know. His extreme sensitivity to color and light is the heart of his art, along with his acute awareness of place, that special quality that makes each location distinctive and worth seeing. Larry is sometimes distracted from fully appreciating the hidden beauty of a The painting "Shadows on the Beach," by Larry Horowitz will be featured in episode 105 of the show "Side Order of Life" airing on Lifetime on the 19th of August, 2007. particular landscape. This happened during his many road trips from Southern to Northern California, in which he often passed through the Santa Ynez Valley. Though he noticed that the surrounding countryside was lovely, dotted with vineyards and farms, he did not make time for an extended, working stay. It was only last year, while watching the film, Sideways, that Horowitz found himself literally painting with his eyes the unfolding scenery on the big screen.

The result was a marvelous, leisurely trip through the now-famous grape growing valley. Following a Sideways map, he visited many of the wineries highlighted in the film, took adventurous side trips recommended by locals that he met, and tapped into the strong feelings aroused by the landscape and its vintner mystique. Along the way Horowitz found scene after scene that he felt compelled to capture in oil, watercolor, or pastel. As Larry later put it, “There’s no way that such a landscape does not influence your painting. I felt entranced by its scenery and the atmospheric quality of its light, so typical of that unique light I find everywhere in California.”

After Larry worked for long time in the Santa Ynez Valley, producing many of the extraordinary works in our present exhibition, he journeyed on, driving up California’s historic Highway One, stopping to paint and draw wherever sea or land beckoned, until finally he reached a beautiful coastal area just north of San Francisco where he discovered Muir Beach and the nearby village of Bolinas. There he became immersed in an entirely different kind of mood and sense of place, more intimate and remote. In his large oil painting of a hillside “writers cabin,” California Cabin in the Woods, Horowitz reveals this mood beautifully.

These and other works inspired by Horowitz’s long trip up California’s Route 1 offer a marvelous contrast to those inspired by a similar journey that he took up another Route 1, the one that winds through New England. When these two bodies of work are juxtaposed against each other, the differences between the two coasts become striking: the west with its sharp lines, distinct shapes, and luminous light; the east with its tree covered hills, amorphous shapes, and dark tones. Larry Horowitz captures it all for us. As always with this remarkable artist, the essence lies in the nuance, in the subtle play of light and form, in the connection he forges between a particular place and our experience of that place.

-Franklin Bowles