Larry Foden



Larry Foden has worked as an artist and instructor in Toronto and Vancouver in the fields of theatre, stage decoration, costume design, but always returning to his first love, painting.

Larry moved to Galiano in 1994. Living in a cottage by the seaside overlooking Georgia Strait, he and canine companion, Jenny, explore Galiano's distinctive rocky coastline daily. His painting draws from this experience but also from something deeper in the mind. He richly renders convolutions of eroded rock and driftwood against the extreme quiet and subtlety of misty ocean and distant vague land forms. The eye is easily caught in labyrinths of rocky form, finding images that avoid precise definition as in clouds. The paintings mingle things solid, immovable and enduring as well as things active, and ever changing in a provocatively haunting way.

Statement:

“I was born in Kapuskasing Ontario – a Precambrian wilderness of silent rock eroded by active waters... an environment rich in the archetypal mysteries of creation. The magic and timeless beauty of nature... the wheel of life and eternity.

In the pattern of a wheel, turning full circle, my education carried me from the ecology and culture of Northern Ontario to the culture of mountains and coastal myths. The second turn of the wheel brought me to the pre-columbian arts and culture of Mexico. Yet another turn brought new discoveries with my journey back to the rocks of my childhood; that place of solitude and memory.

I studied the content, techniques and styles of art history while exploring and developing my skills in a variety of mediums. The art, culture and unique natural beauty of the landscape familiar to me began to shape my directions in art.

My apprenticeship completed; my timeless place found in the closing of a circle: those threads of my experience, having woven themselves into the foundations my future work.

My first 50 years were ones of exploration and discovery. My next 50 will be doing that which I most love to do... create images.”
Larry Foden 1994