Blaine Gledhill Larson

Blaine Gledhill Larson (July 13, 1937 – November 24, 2022) was a prominent American post-war abstract expressionist artist and educator allied with the Washington Color Painters active in the vibrant Washington DC area art scene centred around the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design and the Washington Gallery of Modern Art in the second half of the 20th century and early 21st century. Although often included in the second generation of Colour Painters, like Leon Berkowitz, he rejected the label for his work, insisting he was sui generis.

Blaine Gledhill Larson
Born	(1937-07-13)July 13, 1937 Salt Lake City, Utah, U.S.
Died	November 24, 2022(2022-11-24) (aged 85) Phenix, VA., U.S.
Other names	Franklin Gledhill Larson, Blaine Larson-Crowther
Education	American University
Occupation(s)	Painter, educator
Spouse	Anne Donovan

Early life and education

Blaine Gledhill Larson was born July 13, 1937, in Salt Lake City, UT^[1] to Blaine Cowley Larson and Margaret Gledhill. His father was very active in public service and local politics and his mother was a concert pianist.^[1]

Between 1953 and 1958 he studied at Mills College, University of California at Berkley, and the San Francisco Art Institute. Under the tutelage of Robert Franklin Gates, He completed a Bachelor of Art from American University in Washington, DC in 1963, where he also received a Master's in Art in 1966. ^[2]

From 1961 to 1963 he served in the Peace Corps in Manilla, Philippines.^[1] Their activities during their time in the Philippines are detailed in the book Answering Kennedy's Call: Pioneering the Peace Corps in the Philippines by Parker W. Borg (Author), Maureen J. Carroll (Author), Patricia MacDermot Kasdan (Author), Stephen W. Wells (Author).

He married Rayna Gay Pace on August 2, 1957 (div.) and had two children. He later married Anne Virginia Donovan (daughter of State Senator John A. K. Donovan) on December 23, 1967. Anne was studying painting under Pietro Lazzari at the Corcoran School of Art. Anne is known for her octopus paintings on oval canvases and wooden boards. John and Mary gave, as a wedding gift, their country log home on the Catoctin Creek in Taylorstown, Virginia, which they dubbed "Little Alps". They had three children.^[1]

Career

After returning from the Peace Corps, Larson taught in Arlington County Public Schools (VA), and Mary Washington College in Fredericksburg, VA.^[3] Beginning in 1969 he taught at the Corcoran College of Art and Design, and was chair of their open painting program.^[2]

Larson (who, for a time, shared studio space with Jennie Lea Knight)^[2] began exhibiting at the Jefferson Place Gallery in 1965 under the name Blaine Larson–Crowther. He would have four additional solo shows at Jefferson Place between 1967 and 1970. In 1968 curators James Harithas, Director of the Corcoran, and Walter Hopps, Director Washington Gallery Modern Art, included Larson's paintings in the exhibition "Ten Years," celebrating the 10th Anniversary of the Jefferson Place. The exhibition also included the works of William Calfee, Gene Davis, Willem de Looper, Thomas Downing, Robert Franklin Gates, Colin Greenly, Sam Gilliam, Helene Herzbrun, Valerie Hollister, Sheila Isham, Jacob Kainen, Rockne Krebs, Howard Mehring, Mary Pinchot Meyer, Kenneth Noland, V.V. Rankine, and Paul Reed. ^[4]

After the Jefferson Place closed in 1974, Larson exhibited with Gallery 10, and later Diane Brown Gallery in the 1970s, and Jack Rasmussen Gallery in the 1980s.^[2]

In 1970, his work was included in "Ten Washington Artists: 1950–1970" at the Edmonton Art Gallery in Edmonton, Alberta,^[5] which also included the works of Davis, Downing, Gilliam, Knight, Krebs, Mehring, and Noland, along with Clark V. Fox and Morris Louis. That same year, his work was also included in the exhibition "Washington: Twenty Years" at the Baltimore Museum of Art.^[2] which also included Downing, Gilliam, Greenly, Herzbrun, Isham, Krebs, Louis, Mehring, Meyer, and Noland, as well as works by Leon Berkowitz, James Gabriel, Mary Orwen, Carroll Sockwell, and Robert Stackhouse.

In his master's thesis, "Development of a Graphic Vocabulary," for American University, Larson wrote that he aimed to study "natural forms... not previously used to any great extent in painting and drawing," and selected skeletal systems, insects, protozoa, and plants (excluding flowers). Art critic, Andrew Hudson, described the work in Artforum as "daring" and "going against "safe taste,"" and reminiscent of Ferdinand Léger, Nicholas Krushenick, and Paul Klee rather than Kenneth Noland or Morris Louis.^[6]

In a review of the 10th Anniversary of the Jefferson Place, Washington Star critic Benjamin Forgey wrote that Larson "wins the humor department with a canvas shaped like a funny-bone,"^[7] Of a 1970 exhibition, where Larson worked with plywood cutouts, Washington Post critic Paul Richard wrote, "The gallery visitor, long accustomed to precision and austerity is likely to find these squirmy things menacing and disconcerting," further stating how the art evokes the works of Frank Stella, Robert Irwin, the Surrealists, and Henri Matisse's paper cut-outs.^[8]

Death and legacy

Larson died on November 24, 2022, at his home in Phenix in Charlotte County, Virginia. Larson's work is included in the Corcoran Legacy Collection^[9] at American University.^[10]