One of many artists showing their work during Miami Art Week was Larry Weidel, whose prolific body of work includes photography, painting, and even an extensive career in the business world.
We had the chance to connect with Weidel during the opening of his exhibition at SCOPE Miami in the Axion Gallery booth. He gave us a good insight into his development as an artist, his nomadic upbringing, and the reasons why he finds creating his paintings using repurposed murals as a canvas so fascinating.
Thank you so much Larry for taking the time to talk to us, I know today is like a super busy day, it’s the first day here at Scope. Tell me a little bit about the work that you’re exhibiting here today.
What we have here today is variations on a theme of one of my favorite colors, which is purple, and seeing what kind of variety of pallettes, from bold, to a hurricane picture over there, to subtle palettes, just a wide variety, and they all tell their own story...purple’s always been my favorite color, and I’ve used it anytime I’ve had family or company banners and things like that, I always went to purple. It’s not an obsession, it’s just a favorite. It’s fun to see how they work and play with other colors and different intensities and compositions and styles, so I thought I’d bring ‘em all together and let ‘em play off each other and tell their own stories. Talk to each other.
That’s beautiful. And the way you combine greens and purples and the textures, also, are very interesting. And I think it’s kind of like a signature of your work, right? The textures that you use, and also the materials. I know there’s a very interesting story behind the materials that you use. Can you tell me a little bit about that?
It’s the textures, it's the colors, but it’s the complexity. And I think complexity is where you get the intrigue, and the idea of liking something, like, what can separate this from digital, graphic art, which is perfect, like in photography I do live, I rarely use a tripod because I want it to be spontaneous, y’know, and not totally pre-arranged, because to me it’s sterile. Y’know, you make everything perfect, it’s sterile. So with the painting it’s the complexity and going in like a childlike thing. I got started at an early age with this stuff, and when you start as a child, you just go with what you love about it. And I was exposed to a lot of, well, that’s another story, but I got started with this medium through photography, doing photography of wild, abandoned, colorful areas of the city that have been long since forgotten about, but they’d peel back, they’ve fallen down, and if you went in with a different kind of eye, you could see all kind of beautiful abstracts, And so that’s what led me to this. It’s really the fact that in photography I just love doing abstracts more than anything. And macro photography sometimes. But you know, the sidewalk you’re standing on, or cracks in the wall, or blinds, shadows. So the phrase is like, “hidden in plain view.” Life is very complex, most people are not that interested enough to stop and pay attention and notice all this stuff, it doesn’t mean that much to them, but if you’re someone who likes color, likes art, and you get intrigued, you end up seeing things other people don’t see. So what I’ve done, through photography and through painting, is identify those things and bring them out, to where other people can see what I see, and at least use that as a starting point. Because even in photography, I’ll have the images printed on canvas and use that as a starting point. I did find one area where I could get big sheets of old paint, murals, where it’s been up there forever, and they’d painted and painted and painted, to where it’s gotten a quarter-inch, half-inch thick, and even more. And you pull those off, you separate those, and now you have a different kind of canvas. And that’s what got me excited about those. It’s the layers, but it’s also the different color combinations because when people are painting after someone else, they don’t care what someone else painted, they’re painting their thing. But then when it dries in there, and that gets painted on, and that gets painted on, and then you go in and you’re able to - that ages, those colors...Colors are alive, they’re organic, they mix and mingle. So it’s been very fascinating to go and peel those things back and see what’s behind the scenes, what’s hiding behind the curtain there in all those layers that was never even intended to be there. But the art made it happen, the paint made it happen, the heat, the elements, the moisture. And when you peel that back, you reveal it, and then it’s a great starting point. For me, it’s a more fascinating starting point, not using it all the time but using it a lot of the time, to launch and come up with something new and fun. Because I look for whatever - I am a wild photographer, I look for things that cause me to go wild. And it’s the same thing with painting. Same thing in business. Y’know, I was never interested in just “doing it,” I wanted to do it at a wild level. Because when you do it at that level, you don’t mind working hard, paying the price, because of the thrill and the payoff it gives you. Everything’s gonna be work, everything’s gonna be a challenge, and stretch you. If it’s something that’s gonna help develop you, it’s like lifting weights, it’s gonna stretch you and challenge you, and you’re gonna get frustrated, in anything. But if you’re doing it for something you love, and for the purpose of coming up with something really inspiring, then it’s really worth it, and you stay after longer. A lot of the time, that last little bit of energy, that last step, when you’re ready to just quit and walk away, but you go back and attack it one more time, that’s usually when the breakthrough comes in. The shade of color in painting, or the design, you make a little adjustment and all of a sudden everything works together. But if you’re not really motivated to do something great, you’re just trying to toss something off, you’ll say “Well, that’s enough of that, it’s not worth it.”
You just mentioned your childhood, right? And I know you had a pretty nomadic upbringing. How does that influence your art, and in particular did it influence the work we’re seeing at SCOPE today?
Well, at the time I thought it was very frustrating. My father was in the Air Force and we moved about once a year. So at the time it’s just annoyance, we’ve got to go here, we’ve got to go there. But along the way, I was in New York City my formative years, and going to school, Staten Island, Governor’s Island, which is right off the tip of Manhattan, and the school would take us to the museums, and so I’m very familiar with all the museums, didn’t want to go but you get infected by that, you know? And then I went over, the next place we were in, three years over in Italy, in Tuscany, right on the coast about ten miles from Pisa, a little town called Tirrenia. So we would make regular trips to Florence, it was less than an hour away, and then down to Rome, it was about two hours. And those were two of the main places, occasionally Venice and Naples. You get in there, and you get exposed to the masters, and so I got infected with it kind of indirectly, and of course there was an art teacher over there, a painter, so you could do it in school. But I was inspired, again, by doing it at the highest level, the “wow,” the dramatic. And since I knew I could never be Michelangelo, or Leonardo or Rafael, on down through the list, I got intrigued with abstracts. Because I did like the color. I could get a brush, a canvas, at like, 12, 13 years old, and put paint up there, and make broad strokes, start to create some energy, something that would entertain and interest me…but I got into photography over there because they provided that for all of the GIs, soldiers, ‘cause they’re all over there with nothing to do. So the Army had all kinds of hobby things for soldiers to do, but none of them would take advantage of it. So we had free paper, photographic paper, I don’t know where I got the camera, but the darkrooms, the developing rooms, they’d show us how to do it, so we had all free supplies. So that’s how I got involved. Because I figured, by the time I made the decision I was trying to paint clouds.
Maybe inspired by Italy?
Yes. Beautiful clouds. Tuscany. And y’know, I’m in the frustration of just trying to capture that, just getting started, and I get the camera and it’s like “Oh, I can just take the picture, and I’ve got it perfectly.” So I said, “I’ll just let God be the artist, and I’ll just take pictures.” So that’s how I go into photography and abstract art, my fascination, right from the beginning. But also, doing it at the highest level, I can see how these other great artists had inspired people. So it was worth the effort to master your craft to the point that you can reach unlimited numbers of people - three generations! - where it would never get old. And so that’s like, when I would talk to you about, you know, we’re looking around here at some of these with the complexity of colors and textures and composition, is to have an unlimited level of intrigue. Y’know, Van Gogh could do it realistically, I can’t - I’m obviously not a Van Gogh, but I could do it with paint and abstracts to a degree, anyway, and put things out there that people could find something new every time they went and looked at it. And I paint these things, and I still find things that are new. A lot of these have been done for a few months, and I’m seeing them up in the lights right now, and it’s like “Oh, I don’t remember that part.” (Laughs) “Oh, that’s cool, I didn’t see it from that angle before.” And so that’s what makes it fun for me. Because, usually if you do something you’re tired of it, you don’t wanna see it anymore. I don’t like to hear my own voice, if I record something someone says listen to that, it’s like sandpaper. I enjoy going back, even though I did them I still enjoy going back, and that kind of tells me, maybe there’s something there for other people too. Anyway, that’s some of the background. When I left Italy, my father got transferred - we were there for three years - he got transferred back to Long Island, in the Hamptons, so I graduated high school in Westhampton Beach. Strong art community up there. So I continued on with the art in high school and then continued on into architecture in college. That’s the thread.
We’re talking about the “wow” factor, and you’ve excelled in many aspects of your life. You’re also a very accomplished writer, you published a very good book. And based on the conversation we’re having now, I can tell you’re a pretty passionate storyteller. So how do you find a parallel between your paintings, your writings, your business, with storytelling?
Everyone has their story, and it’s not just the story of your life. It’ll be the story of your year, your month, your day. One thing proceeds into the other. It’s like the South Park (guys), I don’t know if you know this one, the guys doing the little cartoon on Comedy Central? They had one idea they got from a professor in college and that is, when you’re telling a story, don’t just stop the scene and go to something else, always lead into the next thing. So when they storyboard their shows, episodes, even though it’s cartoons, they always have a logic to it. And so what’s happened is art is very undersold in education and underappreciated. They understand it with music, learn to play a musical instrument and that’ll help you in your academic world. But it’s undersold to me, because I’ve been there. The training that I had early on in composition and using the materials and the sequence, it’s like, business is projects. Life is projects. You start things, you go after them, and you either finish it the way you want or you get diverted to something else, and you go on and change course. And so, how you do that, navigating that, a lot of how you successfully navigate a work of art is very similar to how you successfully negotiate projects in all areas of life, and especially in business. So it’s very helpful, and I didn’t even really realize it until decades later, of how that thinking held together. So when you’re doing a work of art, even photography, you capture the image, but it’s like, which one do you choose to present to the public? Well, you’ve got to edit, and you’ve got to evaluate, you can’t shift it, once you’ve taken the shot, it’s there! Like a painter, like Carravaggio, he had a certain lover, there’s a picture of him in one of his paintings, draped around her, they’re laying there on his couch. Well all of a sudden she’s not around anymore, he’s still got the painting, and he’s got a new girlfriend. So he paints her out and paints the new one in! (Laughs) You can’t do that in photography, y’know? But you can select. You use those things, like “Which one do I select?” How do I edit for composition, and tonal qualities and things like that. Of course, when you’re going into painting, you’re creating that. And you do have more options to use. But if it’s in business or even writing, like if you write a book, that’s a project. It’s like you’ve got a blank canvas, what are you gonna do with it? If you write a book, what’s it gonna be about? And you’ve got to think, every story’s got to be about something. That’s why I’m really big on titles, if you go through my catalog of the paintings, and the photography, there’s a lot of thought put into the titles, because the titles of these things help to tell the story that’s being presented. Now, I don’t tell the story, I don’t fill in all the blanks, but it gives you a direction to go in. Like this one right over here, “Wynwood Lips,” it evokes all the craziness of the Design District and Wynwood in Miami. The love of the gritty, y’know, it’s gray, there’s like the gritty love of color, in freeform in doing what you want.
Yeah, it’s like pop art but abstract, because you think of Wynwood and you think of faces, and a lot of pop art. But you see this, and it’s the opposite. That title actually caught my eye.
Yeah, so in terms of storytelling, everything’s a story, like in a book it’s like, what’s the main thing you wanna get from a book? With me, it’s winning, it’s like, that’s what I’ve focused on. When you start something, you wanna get it done. I was enough of an athlete in high school to learn that winning is better than losing. And people who win have a strategy about it. Everybody’s frustrated, everybody gets beat, everybody has disappointments, but the thing is, do you have some successes along the way? And how can you organize your life to go from one success to another, turn things around and stay on track? What I did was, when I wrote the book, it was an offshoot of my management training. In business, working with people is like, it all has to do with how you interpret life, how you look ahead, it’s like when you look at a canvas when you look at a picture, you’ve gotta see it. At least see a general idea, see the theme of what you want. You may change it, but you’ve gotta - it’s like Picasso said, everything starts with something. Everything starts from something else. It’s continuity. So you may start with something, get going, and then change it into something else, and you get it going and then you let it become what it wants to become, it takes on a life of its own. And so, like in writing the book, I wanted to write a book about winning, but I wanted to make it as simple as possible, and I wanted to write it for people who are on the way up, and I wanted to save them decades of floundering around, learning these principles, because everyone pretty much uses the same principles. And I wanted to get those down to help people because great ideas don’t care who uses them. And as soon as you get it in your head, you can start applying these things in your life, and start stacking the odds of success in your favor, rather than against you, just with the decisions, and the moves, and the responses you make. That’s what the book was about, breaking it down, how does it start, what do you run into next, how do you wrap it up, how do you launch it into the next one. So that’s what the book Serial Winner is all about.
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