Paintings by Charles Allen LaRue: Exhibit

Paintings by Charles Allen LaRue
Jansma Gallery at NCCA-Artsplace, 13 E. Main St., Fremont, 231-924-4022.

Charles is a Michigan native and it is from the Great Lakes State that he derives much of his inspiration for his colorful interpretations of the structures and organic forms that he depicts.

He had drawn pictures since he was old enough to grasp a pencil in his fist, and sought a way of doing something with his love of picture- making. So upon high school graduation he moved from South Haven to Grand Rapids to attend the Kendall College of Art and Design, graduating with an Illustration major. Charles freelanced and did in-house work as an illustrator.

Charles had three pivotal experiences that collectively catapulted him into going headlong into pure Fine Arts painting. He spent a summer in France where he studied informally and steeped himself in the paintings and scenery of what he had previously known only through reproductions in art books. He began seeing light and colors more robustly in everything. When Charles returned to Grand Rapids with a new vision and essentially truly beheld GR’s Heritage Hill area for the first time he saw the neighborhood as a shapescape, with clustered architectonic geometries, as he had been sensitized to in Paris. The colors flooded in for him that had been pale in comparison to his older work.

Later, Charles moved from purely geometrized patterns all coalescing, into paintings that allowed more atmosphere and fluid, organic elements. But he still paints in the manner of a craftsman; feeling as though he is assembling discrete units of colored materials into a gestalt image. Charles maintains a studio in Grand Rapids and can be seen frequently in the city, carrying a sketchbook to record more potential painting inspirations.