ABOUT LANNY

I grew up in Kent, CT, was in college in the late 60’s (art history major) and moved to the Vineyard full-time in 1970. I have lived at my current location in beautiful downtown West Tisbury for eleven years. 

There is a huge volume of precedent artistic talent in my family, including my mom’s great sculpture and my dad’s designs for both traditional colonial and innovative modern homes; and there are the fine oil on canvas landscapes of Nelson Augustus Moore (1824-1902) and his son Edwin.  

I cannot say for sure why I have painted in such a variety of styles over the years. It's fun I suppose.   I can speculate, however, that after many years in carpentry, where considerable repetition is a given, that I am not about to settle into stylistic confines when the creative possibilities are so wide open. 

 There’s something about a fresh white canvas that does not want to go where we’ve gone before.  I would prefer that people can know that my art will have surprises for them.  And I endeavor to keep the attitude cup always way more than half full.  My experiences as a student of art and as a painter of paintings contribute directly to the composition, color play and inclusion of abstract components in my avian photography.

ARTIST'S STATEMENT on MY MOST RECENT PAINTINGS of WAVES

I am resistant to any reliance on an "artist's statement", which sometimes just seems to be an increment of the presentation package expected.   I would rather enjoy people's responses to what they see and what they are drawn to in one of my pieces, without any initial prompt from me.  It's the paintings that should serve as the launch of a dialog, a dialog that can take place without the artist first justifying or explaining.

Notwithstanding this disclaimer, I would like to say:

The most recent of my paintings are a series of portraits of ocean waves, graphic enough that not much explanation is required at level one.  Behind the representation, though, is this philosophical intent:  the relentless power of seaborn waves, meeting the shore at the end of a rhythm sequence which began with wind over water, which began with air rushing from high pressure to low pressure, swirling within a charged and restless atmosphere, gives me hope that the innate lust for life and diversity prevalent in Nature will persevere despite the contemporary threats we, the hominids, seem to pose on almost every front, from overgrazing the slopes of Kilimanjaro to the bleak and polluting industrial wastelands of almost any country you can name, to the decimation of fish and mammal stocks in our oceans, to the stuff we wash down the kitchen sink.  I hope the life-sustaining energies of our planet will transcend the blight of our modern economic machine, that the seas and the air and earth, the core and dermis of our globe, can handle our insults and abrasions as she has survived over time other challenges to her sense of balance and well-being.  I am ever skeptical, but rarely cynical.

I hope I am not too naive in trusting that the hubris which prompts our disrespect for the planet is just another off day in the profusion of life on Earth, which nurtures the most extraordinary inventions we can imagine, and beyond imagining.  Let us not abuse the bounty of Nature, so often betraying her legacies. The arrogance we offer as contribution is, I pray, only a temporary reflection of our miscalculations and inattention, not an irreversible theme for the planet ... and for us.

Waves give us awe, respect and this hope.