Artist Statement –– Images that warm my soul. Larry Felder July 2008

The subjects of my oil paintings have always had something to do with the Sea. When people ask why I paint what I do, my answer always comes back to the fact that I love creating scenes that satisfy my need to remember growing up on the Gulf Coast of Texas in the 1950’s. Wanting to relive your childhood is certainly not that unusual, but I suspect it may be more than that in my case. There is something about the loving attention I received from my large, extended family, who would all marvel about even the smallest piece of Art I created of the “Coast.” Those warm feelings have stayed with me ­­–– at least the need for them has. I feel that same warmth now when I share my paintings with people who appreciate them. My images are of today, but anchored in the not-so-distant past as, harbor-by-harbor and boat-by-boat, they disappear from existence.

My youthful playground was the small, fishing town of Port Aransas, on Mustang Island near Corpus Christi, Texas –– surrounded by shallow flats, sloughs, bays, estuaries, ship channels, ferries, jetties, islands, beach, dunes, surf, big skies and the Gulf of Mexico. My whole family would spend the summer in my grandfather’s old, converted, wooden Army barracks he had purchased after the war. It made a wonderful coast house! We slept on wooden Navy bunks looking up at the rafters that were filled with old fishing rods and reels. We ate on a ten-foot, hand-made, picnic table, spent mornings fishing and the afternoons swimming or fishing at the beach. Returning from the beach we had to bathe in a metal washtub on the old back steps before we were allowed into the house. We were a huge family and lived every day to the max. The men of my family had already built five boats by the time I was born. At age twelve, my island friends and I roamed Port Aransas on motor scooters without anyone asking our age. When I turned 18, I danced to the sounds of Max and the Laughing Kind at the Dunes Club on the beach. Such was life!

I am a “visual learner,” a term educators use to describe those people who need to “see it” in order to remember it. I “saw it” all right. I grew up surrounded by a visual atmosphere of old boats, Gulf, bay, jetty and surf fishing, crabbing, cooking over a fire on the beach, surfing, sandcastles, dune buggies, weathered-looking people in old clothes reserved for fishing, old cars from the 40’s and 50’s…….and afternoon naps. And of all that imagery, permanently etched in my mind is the calm water of the early morning harbor with no breeze to disturb the mirror-like reflections of the boats, docks, ropes, birds and sky. I would see these scenes before the breeze would disrupt their beauty because my father would wake our whole family up at four in the morning to be putting out of the harbor before the sun came up. That’s when I first fell in love with water reflections – perhaps because I was still in a dream state that early in the morning. Water reflections are what I love to paint the most, and I have spent countless hours staring at them.

All these things added together make a “visual soup” that I can’t resist painting. And there is no better place to paint them than where I now live, only a few miles from where that old Army barracks used to be. I’ll continue to paint the images that ask to be painted –– until which time they no longer exist. Images from my childhood. Images that look like they could be real. Images that beg for attention. Images that warm my soul.