Larry Karlin, american painter in Spain

USPA NEWS - The New Yorker Larry Karlin arrived in Spain in 2003 following the love. He left behind his profession as a biologist, his work as a teacher, his family and friends. Without speaking Spanish but wanting to embark on new professional paths, he introduced himself to the artistic environments of a small city such as Logrono, capital of the Rioja wine region, where he learned his first words in the new language. Thirteen years later, Larry Karlin is a valued painter whose works hang in places as far apart as Madrid or New York.

Larry Karlin no had easy. Although recognizes that always liked draw, had to learn techniques painting to dominate brushes and find their style. Is defined as a painter figurative and realistic, focused on the human figure as main reason of their works. The day that USPA News spoke with him, in April 2018, Larry Karlin was working on a great wall aimed at a bar of new construction and advanced design. A job and demanding difficult “because I have never painted something so big.“

"I love the paintings of Goya, Velazquez and also recent ones," says Larry Karlin, in love with the great Spanish masters of painting. "But I do not try to copy," he warns. They are his references, but he has developed his own style, "hyper-realistic, a style that I have been working for twelve years," he explains. "I got together with a sculptor, Olarte, and I learned, first, to talk a little and then to paint. He is abstract, but I always return to the human figure, to the faces. It was hard. I had always thought about being an artist, but suddenly a lady came in and bought me a painting. I thought: someone is going to pay me for doing something I like."

Can you live from painting? In Spain, the eternal debate is whether artists can live from their work or need to develop another activity that pays them their receipts. "I live from painting," says Larry Karlin. "It would have been easier to be an official, I was a professor before. There are times when I sell three or four paintings in a month, but there are months when I do not sell anything."

"Many people try to calculate how long it takes to make a painting," explains Larry Karlin, who admits that each of his works is like a child with its own personality. "It's not like that, at least my paintings are not like that. There are very regular painters, but I am not like that. I suffer with every painting, but it's my style." A style of its own. "No one confuses my paintings with the pictures of others," he says. His work has been exhibited at the Marques de Vallejo hotel in Logrono, at the Viura hotel in Villabuena, in Alava, and hangs in homes in Madrid and New York.

Larry Karlin's painting does not abuse colors, uses grays and blues to create atmospheres and transmit sensations. Among his projects underway is the first painting that will contain vines, a new reason for the painter. "I do not know how it will come out," he admits as he teaches USPA News the ongoing project. "I'm looking for sensations," explains Larry Karlin, "I do not use very strong colors, I prefer subtle colors. I look for light, you see the painting and you feel something. I am not a colorful painter, first is light."