Victor Lara: Passion in Paint

Victor Lara, Untitled painting; acrylic on canvas, 
7ft 9in x 12ft 10in, 2010 – 2015

Detail

My own sense when looking at Victor Lara's most recent paintings is that once where there was turmoil, now there is a garden. What was once an abstract reincarnation of something like Michelangelo's Last Judgment, with all of its writhing layers of humanity, ascending and descending, we now enjoy something more serene, more pastoral, and while possibly more layered and complex, more Giverny, more Monet's water lilies.

Victor Lara, Untitled painting; acrylic on canvas, 
7ft 9in x 12ft 10in, 2010 – 2015

Detail

One has to appreciate both, but the latter is easier on our blood pressure. This most recent work recalls Lara's small water colors of more than thirty years ago. 

Victor Lara, Untitled, watercolor,
4 x 6 inches, 1982, private collection

Victor Lara, Untitled, watercolor,
4 x 6 inches, 1981, private collection

Victor Lara, Untitled, acrylic on canvas,

 48 x 24 inches, 1992, private collection*

Victor Lara, Untitled painting; acrylic on canvas, 

6ft 6in x 4ft 6in, 2005–2012

The recollections start with the color and light, but also the delicate but powerful spirit of nurture/nature. Coupled with the raw finger-painted energy of the mammoth paintings of the 1990's we now find ourselves riding his undulating masses of shifting forms on sumptuous abstract waves of rich and fertile revelation.* These new paintings are impossibly alive, bursting with affirmation, ripe and glorious with unfolding vitality and invention, like some place we have never been, teaming with effervescence and the kind of magic and miracle that we might find at the bottom of the ocean or in some hidden valley or on another planet. 

Victor Lara, Untitled, acrylic on canvas,
RISD 2011 Biennial

What Victor Lara promised in his drawings 40 years ago he has delivered in his painting in this new millennium. And more. Victor Lara is a great painter. It may be one thing to mention Michelangelo or Monet, but Lara is a great painter for his time, our time, all time. His paintings unfold like the night sky. They unfold like a box full of Russian nesting dolls, one after another. They unfold like a lotus flower inside of a lotus flower inside of a lotus flower. Or better, a universe inside of a universe inside of a universe. One day a very big fuss will be made about his work.

Addison Parks

Spring Hill, July 2016

Victor Lara, Untitled painting; acrylic on canvas, 
8ft 6in x 6ft 7in, 2003-2015

Victor Lara, Untitled painting; acrylic on canvas, 

8ft 6in x 6ft 7in, 2003-2015

Victor Lara, Untitled painting; acrylic on canvas, 

6ft 7in x 5ft 7in, 2005–2009

Victor Lara, Untitled painting; acrylic on canvas, 
11ft x 9ft 6in, 2001–unfinished

*Unfortunately I only have an example of a medium small painting from the 1990s.

Born in Austin, Texas, Victor Lara was educated at the University of Texas, Austin, the Cleveland Institute of Art and Yale University, where he received his MFA in 1967.  He has been a professor of art, teaching painting and drawing at Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) since 1973. 

http://www.victorlarapainter.com