Larry Roots “Abstractions and Other Narratives”

Garden of the Zodiac Gallery, Old Omaha Association

Omaha, Nebraska presents: Larry Roots, “Abstractions and Other Narratives”

Roots’ recent paintings provide a unique catalogue of his approach to working with acrylics. The artworks coalesce a multiplicity of crosscurrents into each composition: they are at once painterly and restrained, opaque and translucent, freeform and gridded, raw and delicate. Roots’ abstractions here are improvisational and lyrical, pushing and pulling the eye across their atmospheric surfaces and into depths of color, shape and line. Context is also provided for the evolution of Roots’ style with a selection of older personal favorites, paintings that encapsulate his forays into merging calligraphy with gestural abstraction.

Also new in this exhibition are Roots’ sculptural reliefs. These provide insight to the artist’s approach to pictorial space as inherently dimensional, creating illusions of deep perspective within the confined space of a diorama. As if designing art installations in miniature, Roots populates these architectural spaces with a variety of objects in miniature, many of them repurposed from his maquettes and “boneyard of ideas” for sculptures over the years.