Sunflower Painting

Because I work from my imagination, I am always looking for information to inform it. Larry Graeber, a Texas-based artist, considers himself a painter and sculptor. He presently works in San Antonio and Marfa TX studios. Raised in Austin the oldest of three children, the son of an architect, and homemaker/ volunteer. Larry was always involved in making things: forts, treehouses and down hill coasters. In school it was the industrial arts and architecture classes that peaked his interest, learning to use tools and to draw ideas. Summers were spent working in his grandad's lumber yard, Graeber Lumber. Thinking he might follow in his dad's footsteps college studies began with architectural intentions. Challenged by academia and dyslexic complications Larry changed direction to studying printmaking, jewelry, painting and sculpture, even a little filmmaking. By his second year he had already found a studio in downtown San Marcos that he devoted to painting. Graeber began exhibiting in 1971, curated into Texas Painting and Sculpture Exhibition, Dallas Museum of Fine Arts. His first major one person exhibition was in 1974, Works from a Small Duplex, curated by then director John Leeper and hosted by the McNay Art Museum in their upstairs galleries. After a brief hiatus Larry acquired gallery representation in Houston and Dallas spending subsequent years devoted to these venues and some sizable steel sculpture making. These years also included inclusion in two books; Art at Our Doorstep 2008 compiled by Riley Robinson (Artpace) and Trinity Press. Texas Abstract; modern/contemporary, 2014 Michael Paglia and Jim Edwards, Frisco Books. In 2011 Larry turned his attention to curating, mounting the exhibit Margins; six artists, catalog with essay for the campus gallery, UTSA. In 2016 he was invited to participate in the first pop-up exhibit at the McNay Art Museum, Meet the Future 2016, curated by Rene Barilleaux. Just prior to the pandemic he and Sterling Allen collaborated in the project room of Blue Star Contemporary, with an exhibit of wall and floor sculpture titled Formal Proof, an accompanying catalog with essay by Anjali Gupta, Fall 2019.