Valeri Larko:  Urban Edges

Valeri Larko’s industrial landscape paintings reflect her ongoing fascination with overlooked areas and abandoned spaces on the fringes of the city.  Throughout her career she has engaged in an ongoing artistic dialogue with an urban landscape that is often paradoxical.  Her paintings reveal places that look familiar but are somehow alienating; her gritty subjects often possess a quiet nobility.  Larko finds both beauty and pathos at the intersection of urban culture and nature.  

Through her investigation of the urban landscape, the artist explores the effect man makes on the environment.   Her paintings often juxtapose the pastoral with the industrial.  Man may put his stamp on the natural world, “taming” nature through industry, but nature continually reasserts itself, always trumping civilization. Westchester Creek, Bronx illustrates this intersection of industry and nature. The sweeping panoramic view presents a tranquil waterway lined with trees and flowers along one bank, and a factory on the other.  The still water reflects the scene like a mirror. This near idyllic setting is within New York City, the distant highway visible along the horizon a subtle reminder of the locale.

Not overtly narrative, Larko’s paintings imply rather than tell stories.  What make them dynamic for the viewer are the questions they raise, the curiosity they may pique. Is that water polluted?  Where do those overgrown railroad tracks lead? Who worked in that abandoned gas station? What was the purpose of that factory, warehouse, refinery, or dock, and is it still in use?  Perhaps the most compelling question is, “What attracts the artist to these subjects in the first place?”

A native and long-time resident of New Jersey, Valeri Larko has deep personal and professional roots in the state.  While attending art school in New Jersey she began painting plein air landscapes.  Working from the model at the Art Students League helped establish her preference for painting directly from life.  After moving to Jersey City—a place that she acknowledges had a huge impact on all her subsequent work—Larko turned to the industrial landscape in and around the city for subject matter.  She worked outdoors, experimenting with panoramic views of industrial parks and close up “portraits” of tanks and machinery.   The artist’s early encounters with New Jersey’s urban landscape solidified a relationship with this subject matter and sparked ideas that continue to inspire her.   Relocating to New Rochelle, NY several years ago expanded her geographical reach, and her recent work encompasses the waterways, bridges, highways, warehouses, factories, power lines, and machinery found along the edges of Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx.  Although the locations have changed, she has never altered her method of painting directly from the sites that attract her.

Her primary interest is in capturing the feeling of a particular place, something she believes is best accomplished by immersing herself in the scene. Experiencing the ambiance and spirit of a place is a critical aspect of Larko’s process, and she considers herself an unseen, but important presence in the finished works.  Each of her paintings has a unique story—one that only reveals itself to the artist gradually, day by day, through patient and faithful observation.  For this reason she avoids crowded places, opting instead for the marginal, unpopulated spaces at the edges of urban areas, where she can settle in for extended periods.  She often works on weekends, when many areas are less populated. 

Larko drives around scouting interesting locations, intuitively searching for places that have strong visual attractions (and good vantage points for her easel.)  Extremely resourceful, she carries binoculars to help with close-ups and is prepared to work on small paintings in her car if the weather dictates. She is always willing to chat with the occasional onlooker, believing that this experience enhances the work. 

While there are no people represented in her paintings, she considers them important elements in the “back stories” of these works.  There are numerous references to human hands in Larko’s imagery.  These are, after all, man-made structures imbued with the invisible presence of those who built them.  Rust implies use; graffiti require active street artists; elevated subway tracks suggest riders. To paint Houseboats, Bronx, Larko set up her easel in a gas station parking lot across the Westchester Creek from a quirky little marina.  She liked the idea of “people living on the water in this very funky urban center.”  One of the residents waved to her from across the creek, which led to a subsequent conversation.  Although this person does not appear in the painting, his boat does, and Larko believes that her experience talking with him informs the final painting. 

Another important feature of Larko’s art is her practice of making preparatory studies for her paintings.  Before embarking on any large-scale painting she makes small ink sketches, and once she determines the final subject, she paints a small study in color on canvas or prepared paper.  This study does not serve as a direct source for imagery, but instead helps clarify the composition, forms and proportions of the final painting. Making smaller studies allows her to “see” the finished painting in her mind and plan any adjustments she may need.  Because her large paintings require more than two months to complete, the study also helps her decide if the subject is worth the time commitment involved.  Once she gathers all this information she moves on to the larger canvas.  It is equally important for her to complete the larger work on-site as well, since she relies on her direct observation and personal engagement to convey a palpable sense of the place.

Larko’s paintings are not timeless—on the contrary, each one is firmly situated in a specific time and place.  Her subjects often seem on the cusp of some change, perhaps a new stage of deterioration, of rehabilitation or even ruin, and her paintings encapsulate these transitional moments.  The man-made structures she paints are not permanent, and if she returns to the site of a painting after completing it she may find subtle or even profound changes.  When Larko first visited the cement factory pictured in Edgewater Road, Bronx in 2006, a rusting fence hid a salvage yard where prostitutes conducted their business after hours, and the tumbled rocks reminded her of classical ruins. But unlike the Egyptian pyramids and Greek temples her “contemporary ruins” are as fleeting and transitory as the buildings they once were.  When she returned to the site later, the derelict lot had been cleaned up and a new fence was erected to keep out intruders.  For Larko, the spirit of the place had changed, but her painting holds the embedded stories of the altered landscape. Discovering a kind of visual poetry in just such overlooked places, she documents small segments of their histories.

Larko has always found beauty in decay.  (She once spent five years painting detritus in a salvage yard in Hackettstown, NJ.)  Drawn to contemporary ruins, she considers herself a kind of artistic archeologist who observes and explores artifacts of contemporary culture.  Rusting Gantries, Bronx displays two arch-like structures that span an abandoned ramp.   These decommissioned gantries were once used to load ferries traveling to nearby North Brother Island.  In Larko’s painting they are silent rusting sentinels watching over the shoreline, looking for barges that are long gone. The encroaching hand of nature softens their industrial edges.  Unlike classical ruins, they are relics of the not-too-distant past, cultural remnants from a post-industrial society.  These structures are charged with a presence that is both poignant and poetic.

From an art historical perspective, Larko’s paintings defy categorization. Her work invites comparisons with Precisionists like Charles Sheeler, Elsie Driggs and Charles Demuth, who also depicted mechanical and industrial subject matter rendered in bright, clear light. But their synthesis of abstraction and realism and their use of photography set them apart from Larko.  To some viewers her meticulously rendered scenes may suggest Photorealism, but a closer look reveals a more painterly approach on her part.   Larko does not aim to replicate the look of a photograph, as evidenced by her lively brushwork.   Like the Impressionists she is committed to the concept of plein air painting, although she does not share their interest in capturing changing light and atmospheric effects.  Perhaps as a way to distance herself from this association, she prefers to call herself an “on-site” painter.  What she seeks most through her direct process is the ability to convey to the viewer the rich visual experience she felt in a particular place.

Almost one hundred and thirty years ago, the American artist Winslow Homer explained his preference for pictures composed and painted entirely outdoors, espousing a working method and philosophy that closely matches Larko’s:
Very much of the work now done in studios should be done in the open air.  This making studies and then taking them home to use them is only half right.  You get the composition, but you lose the freshness, you miss the subtle and, to the artist, the finer characteristics of the scene itself.
Homer recognized the value of the artist’s direct engagement with subject matter, a belief shared by Valeri Larko.   For nearly thirty years this belief has permeated her work with a unique vision and powerful spirit.  It has never lost its freshness.  

Mary Birmingham
Director of Exhibitions, Hunterdon Art Museum