ABOVE MAP: The Foosaner Art Museum, located at 1463 Highland Avenue in Melbourne, is open Tuesday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. (the museum stays open until 7 p.m. Thursday); and Sunday, 1-5 p.m.
MELBOURNE, FLORIDA – Luminous Landscapes, an exhibition of more than 30 paintings by Larry Leach, opens Oct. 18 at Foosaner Art Museum in the Eau Gallie Arts District of Melbourne.
Larry Leach, “Hammock at Dusk,” 2014. Oil on canvas, 54 x 96 inches. (Courtesy of the artist.)
The exhibition includes work spanning 19 years of Leach’s prolific career. Often working in series, Leach has made recent additions to the “Smoky Mountain,” “Sunrise, Sunset” and “Island Counterpoint” series, and those new works are included in the Foosaner show. Also on view will be “Bull Creek Autumn,” on loan from the University of Tampa, and “Kissimmee Cypress,” on loan from local art collector Paula Savage.
The exhibition will remain at Foosaner through Jan. 4, 2015.
Leach will give a free Gallery Talk at 2 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 22 at Foosaner. Admission that day is free in celebration of ArtWorks.
A painter for more than 40 years, Leach appropriates qualities of 19th century Impressionist and Romantic realist painting. While the paintings draw on oceanic and rural vistas, all of the work occurs in the studio, where Leach draws from brief sketches or memory.
Larry Leach
“The act of painting is as important as the play of light in the sky and sea and in the form of color of trees and grasses – the relationships of marks of color in relationship to other marks,” Leach said.
“My favorite theme is the first strong light of dawn and the last strong rays of sunset that rake across the landscape.”
Ken Rollins, president of Rollins Fine Art, LLC, writes in the exhibition brochure’s introductory essay, “Every artist strives to capture light in their work whether still life paintings, portraits or other subjects. How the light plays in the painting is crucial to its success and the viewer’s experience. Larry Leach has an exceptional ability at capturing natural light in his paintings.”
Honing his craft by studying his heroes from art history and through years of painting, Leach said the greatest influence on his career was geographical: He was raised by his grandparents in west central Louisiana, on their rural farm and near an untampered forest area, miles from the nearest town.
“The aloneness and freshness of these environments is my motif,” he said.
The Foosaner Art Museum, 1463 Highland Ave., Melbourne, is open Tuesday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. (the museum stays open until 7 p.m. Thursday); and Sunday, 1-5 p.m. Admission is $5 for adults, $2 for seniors, children and students with I.D. Museum members and Florida Tech faculty, staff and students are free with I.D. Thursdays offer free admission all day. Call 321-674-8916 or visit foosanerartmuseum.org for more information.
