Land in our Hands

Abstract art is not visual reality – until you keep looking

Larry Mansker is a virtuoso who has painted professionally and lived in Eureka Springs since 1991. He has just finished a collection of large paintings depicting Ozark forests.  

“I love Eureka and I love this forest,” he said. “The first project I did when I moved here was a series of eight paintings of the town that are hanging on the walls of the fourth floor of the Crescent.”  

He has published a book on that series, and at 85 years old, is now on a mission to explain how Eureka Springs came to be known as an art town. 

Larry Mansker attended Bethany College in Lindsborg, Kansas, where Birger Sandzen had taught before Larry’s arrival on campus. “My college teacher told me never ever let anybody tell me what to paint. You have to decide what to paint.”

However, at 19 Larry was paid to do a 100-sq.ft. mural and decided to take his art in his own direction. “I accepted this at a young age and felt that this was how it was.”

Mansker describes himself as a commercial artist, and said so were Da Vinci and Michelangelo. “I work a lot with architects and designers, so I don’t do one painting. I do twenty, thirty, forty paintings for hotels, offices, banks, hospitals.

“You have to be able to do it all, from underpainting to framing,” he said as he referenced an easel he designed and built himself.  “A painting is not finished until it finds a home. If you have a lot of unsold paintings sitting around your home, you are not finished. That’s the game, really.

“I love this town. I moved here in ‘91. About that time all the people who had started it as an art town in the ‘50s were no longer here. The few who were left I didn’t get to know at all, even though I tried. Almost everyone who is living in Eureka Springs has a really good story about how they got here.”

After a fast-paced 15 years in San Diego, Larry wanted a less hectic life. He left California, and for a year searched for the place he wanted to live, from the Pacific Northwest to Central America. A friend told him about Fayetteville, Arkansas. On his way to Fayetteville, he was told twice, at two different cafés, that Eureka Springs sounded like what he was looking for. “After being in Eureka for thirty minutes, I knew this was it. It was what I was looking for.

“When I got here, I started building my house. I built this house. So, for about three years I had enough money that I could work on the house. After that three years, I was out of money. That’s when I went back to work on art.”  

It took him three years to build three buildings he considers as much a factory as a house. 

“My original idea was to turn that building out back into my gallery and have my studio open. That way people could come up and I’d be working. However, I decided to focus solely on producing paintings instead of running a retail business.

“About eight years ago a bunch of artists and I opened a co-op gallery. That was some of the best artists in town. The fact that eight artists could work together for four or five years was amazing. All artists are different, you know? And there aren’t as many galleries in town as there used to be.”

Larry has adapted to many different trends during his 65-year professional art career. “Styles change. In the ‘30s, the trend was crazy realism. By the’50s, it was abstract. During the ‘70s and ‘80s I basically made a living doing watercolors and prints, silk screens and etchings. I couldn’t give an oil away. Etchings were really, really big in the old days.

“In the early ‘80s, small computers started to become popular and affordable. In about 1983, a banker told my agent they wanted the art in their new branch office to show how ‘high-tech’ they were going to be with their clients’ money. There were a lot of bright lights, fast moving straight lines, and geometric shapes with hard edges. This style became very popular.

“About 1986, the Savings and Loan had a crash. They lost two hundred billion dollars. The same bank again came to my agent. They said they were opening up a new branch and wanted people to see how conservative they were going to be with their money. They wanted all antique paintings to match antique interior. I couldn’t do antique paintings fast enough. That new style lasted until 2000 and was replaced by Arts and Crafts style.

“From around 2000-2008 the trend became arts and crafts. Simple realism instead of ornate realism. It was dark and it was the forest and it was realism – woodsy, foresty. A lot of browns.

“Then in 2008 there was another financial crisis. Nothing happened in the interior market for two years except hospitals, which were being built like crazy. At that point the trend became modern, very austere. That’s still going on today. That was 2008 so I’m expecting things will return to the more traditional. People are fleeing cities and moving to the country. I’m thinking the trend is going to become little-town-in-the-country oriented. The forest might become popular again.

“I just finished a series of paintings on the Ozark Forest. This is a painting that looks like my backyard when it snows. I just finished it recently. I have about twelve big paintings in this series – modern, beyond Impressionism. I tried to make them abstract, very modern, light and airy.”

Larry Mansker and his 2024 Ozark Forest Abstract Collection will be showcased at a Garden Party on Saturday, May 3, at 56 Hillside, following the Artrageous parade.