STATEMENT OF WORK

Larry Willoughby Jr.’s work is part doomsday survival guide, part Hallmark card, part Freudian dreamscape. He combines personal memories, cultural tragedies, spiritual platitudes, and absurdity to conjure uncanny images full of dark humor and heart. 

Larry is a member of YAI Arts, a nonprofit studio program supporting artists with intellectual and developmental disabilities in NYC. He has been drawing since 1974 when he was four years old and his mom got him his first pack of markers. Drawing helps Larry’s mind stay calm, quiet, and focused on the positive, while also providing an outlet for “depression, anxiety, paranoia, fear of ghosts, and psychological feelings.”

His inspirations range from childhood bad dreams and New York nightmares (Covid and Hurricane Sandy) to cherished memories and Biblical reveries. Sourcing images from magazines, books, and the internet, Larry often gravitates towards a stock image aesthetic which he proceeds to turn inside out. Circuses, city buses, and his own self-portraits are repeated motifs. Poems and text snippets sometimes appear in his work, resembling greeting card fare put through a meat grinder. 

Looking at a Larry piece is like seeing a travel brochure from another world – equal parts familiar and wild, serene and paranoiac. Seeing the world through his eyes, you can feel the struggle to stay calm in a world both beautiful and uncontrollable.