Gary LaParl's 'Portraits from a Stolen Past' Comes to Art Ovation in August

 Bradenton resident Gary LaParl is the artist-in-residence at Art Ovation Hotel, August 15-21, 1255 N. Palm Ave in Sarasota. LaParl will be in Art Ovation’s lobby studio, 4-8 p.m. daily, with a public reception on Friday, August 18, 5-7 p.m. His exhibit, “Portraits from a Stolen Past,” features oil paintings and mixed-media oil collage works based on vintage portraits.  An area of the Art Ovation wall space will be devoted to a series of portraits of Sarasota performance artists, including Jeffery Kin, executive director of Sarasota Rising; Leymis Wilmott, artistic director of Sarasota Contemporary Dance; and Alex Pelletier, a graduate of the FSU/Asolo Conservatory and area actor.

 “I’ve always loved vintage portraits of same sex couples and have collected them for years,” says LaParl. “Whether you perceive them as friends or partners, in many of them you can feel melancholy, as well as an excitement for sharing their friendship or relationship in a photo. I love bringing these portraits to life with color and enhancing the positive elements of each image.”

 LaParl adds that, “If these men were indeed romantically linked, how sad to have had the fullness of what their lives and loves might have been taken from them by the social strictures of their time.”

LaParl has been in the Sarasota area since 2014 and spent his early adulthood in Chicago and Philadelphia. There, he enjoyed serving as a theater artist semi-professionally while also working in finance, marketing and training and development. He became interested in visual art during his 18 years living in Salem, MA, and apprenticed as a flat glass craftsperson for 10 of those years with Kai Colombo in neighboring Peabody. He began painting just prior to the pandemic and has been studying with Raleigh, NC-based artist Chelsea Lang for the past three years, and most recently, Sarasota artist Jenny Berry.  

LaParl is a studio artist at Creative Liberties in Sarasota and welcomes the public to visit him there at 927 N. Lime Ave., Sarasota. Two of his works can be seen in the current exhibit, “We Are All One,” at Art Center Manatee on view through August 4.  His “Sag Harbor, 2023” mixed-media oil collage received a 2nd place ribbon in the exhibit. 

For more information, visit www.GaryLaParl.com.