Artist Statement
Darren Larose has explored diverse subject matter throughout his 20 year career as a painter. His work has developed through phases, delineated as Plants, Landscapes, Narratives, and Abstractions. There is a characteristic style and a continuity of aesthetic that runs throughout his work, exemplified by the use of vibrant colours, irreverent approaches to traditional genre, playful and humorous aspects, and the blending of contrasting elements. This blending is visually expressed by the combination of features such as hard geometric lines and expressive painterly aspects, described by the artist as a combination of tight and loose elements. These painterly aspects allow the artist’s hand to wander and for chance and embodied elements to enter the painting. They are given structure by a disciplined adherence to composition achieved through balance, segmented elements, and shifting perspective. The artist often plays with perspective by flattening the pictorial elements exaggerating the 2-dimensional qualities of the picture plain. Flattened, collaged, and seemingly disparate elements are smoothed and united very effectively by the artist’s application of resin to the picture’s surface. The high glass surfaces serve to elevate the status of the works with a visual trope that produces a high-gloss, liquid-like surface, petrifying the layers below. The application of resin began in 2018 and is utilized on the works done on wood panels.
The worlds that are presented in Larose’s work are imagined environments and visual realms that originate from the artist’s dreams and the absorption and recombination of visual media in our world. Some environments are created through automatic processes of mark making that extend and evolve as the work progresses, allowing the nature of experimentation and embodied exploration to dominate.
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