As a boy growing up in Bettenford, Iowa, my life was full of fantasies about the west, it’s heroes, landscape, history and myths. Comic books, movies, Charlie Russell calendar prints, and our annual family summer trips through the west fed those fantasies and I made pictures driven by them.

I received a BFA degree from Pratt Institute of New York in 1963. After graduation, I enjoyed a series of responsibilities in the advertising field and in 1978, moved to Montana to continue my artistic relationship with the west.

My collections are attracted to the color orchestration of my paintings. Expressing my joy for the west is the energy behind the colors I use. My work now is expressing my present relationship with living in the west. No matter how much I explore different techniques and mediums, the subject of my pictures are always a mixture of my present realities and past fantasies with the west.

Larry Pirnie - Artist