An artist who has worked in this area for many years, Eugene Larkin needs little introduction. His works have been shown, collected and appreciated by numerous galleries, museums and collectors throughout the United States. Larkin has been influential both as an artist and as a teacher. Larkin taught at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design from 1954-1969, where he was head of printmaking and Chairman of the Division of Fine Arts. From 1969-1991 he was a professor in the Design Department at the University of Minnesota. His most recent exhibit was a retrospective at University of St Thomas in 1999.
"Sometimes I start the artistic process from a literary source - Adam and Eve, the Egyptian nature gods, or classical Greek themes – but sometimes I start from nature. Trees have always been a favorite subject. I see trees as people, as vertical objects. When I was a child I used to think trees made the wind. I watched the trees blowing and bending and saw that they had personalities that I could equate with human personality.
I have always been in love with wood and the things I could do with it, discovering in lumber marvelous textures and patterns of growth and being able to transform this into something else."
|
