October 10 to November 10, 2003

"Oral Mora", Larry Mullins'¹ first solo-show at Bellwether, features a series of large, text-based, oil-on-birch-panel paintings. Merging Old English script with semi-psychedelic abstraction, Larry¹s paintings bring to mind medieval pageantry, biker tattoos, and carnival hawker signage. Larry¹s layered and distressed way of handling paint evokes time, pentimenti, and exposure.

The words sometimes form obvious, legible, and biting phrases like, "You Killed it, You Eat it," or shape isolated and floating snippets of symmetrical, disassociated code like "S.O.S." The word play in Larry¹s paintings is intended to exist beyond meaning. The text is formal and abstract like beat poetry or Be-bop jazz, it is visual rhythm; shapes making sounds in our minds with our eyes. The language serves as a balance/valence within the painting and becomes a trigger for emotional resonance. The content hovers between in-studio white-noise thought bubbles, lefty political stream-of-consciousness ranting, and crackpot mumbling on any manner of subject from gender to vegetarianism to Frank Sinatra.

Originally from Maryland, Larry has shown extensively since receiving an MFA from the University of Maryland in 1996. Other honors include a Pollack-Krasner Foundation Grant received in 1997, a resident fellowship at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts, and a Space Program Grant from The Marie Walsh Sharpe Foundation in 1999.

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