DESTINATIONS - Banning and Valerie Lary |
review by Kevin Nance
|
|
“Destinations,” the new Central Bank/Arts Connect exhibit of paintings by the Lexington artists Banning and Valerie Lary, has two themes, one obvious, the other less so.
The first theme, signaled by the show’s title, is travel. Most of these vivid, richly hued paintings were inspired by the globe-trotting couple’s visits to New York, Miami, Europe (especially Italy), Istanbul, Africa and the Caribbean, among other picturesque spots. (There are occasional bouts of time-traveling as well, as in Banning’s journeys to the Garden of Eden and ancient Pompeii.) In all these cases, the Larys show us what they saw and, to varying degrees, how they felt about it. There are scenes on sandy beaches, in cluttered restaurants, amid the throngs in street markets and city plazas. There are scenes in which we’re given a closeup, street-level view, and others in which we seem to look down from above, as through a bird’s eye. 
It’s in that divergence that the show’s second, more subtle theme emerges: the manner in which two artists can look at the same thing and represent it in wildly different ways.
Both of these painters are eclectic to some degree; they both approach their canvases with a heavy brush and with what feels like considerable freedom from any dogmatic adherence to a particular style. That said, their perspectives and techniques are distinctly different.
|
Part of the pleasure of viewing “Destinations” is observing the individual uniqueness of these two artists in response to shared experiences.
Of the pair, Banning Lary is more realistic, more concerned with representation and, with a few exceptions, less obviously emotional.
His eye is cooler and more analytical, which produces a fairly high degree of visual fidelity to the subject and, in the process, more or less conventional compositions that pay clear attention to the famous rule of thirds.
His serene Kentucky landscapes and a racing scene at Keeneland offer expertly applied paint and few surprises. I was more drawn to his more abstract and imaginative works such as his ashy Pompeii and idyllic Eden.
Valerie Lary’s work here, by contrast, is mostly abstract, impressionistic and awash in swirling emotion. We view her locales as the crow flies, if the crow were on a particularly psychedelic acid trip; land masses, street grids and architecture dissolve into a jumble of lines and shapes and post-cubist densities. 
These paintings are at once vivid and fuzzily indistinct. You feel they illustrate the artist’s inner landscapes.
|
|
|
