GOOD NIGHT, IRENE

All of life is a love story, if you think about it, in one way or another. Seeking, celebrating, supporting, someone or something you love – be it a passion, a purpose, or a person.

The culmination of this creative collaboration was not exactly a love story, per se, but a story of love in the most meta sense. We fell in love with the art, then we fell in love with the love story behind it, and in the end, it was both the initial ember and the final seal on the deal.

Once upon a time in Big Fork, Montana, a recently relocated and somewhat rudderless artist met a gal in a honkytonk who would indelibly alter the trajectory of his life and his life’s work.

“About three months into [living in Big Fork], I met a cowgirl from Montana,” Larry laughed, with a tongue-in-cheek twang on ‘cowgirl’. “Just a wild and crazy gal. Her husband had died in a plane crash, and she had five children who she was finished raising, and she became a wonderful, wonderful person in my life.”

That woman was Irene, and she became his wife and greatest advocate for his art, putting him in galleries all over the West, despite himself.

“She would always say, ‘This guy I just married spends more time talking people out of his artwork than into it!’” he recalled fondly. “She was a very special person; I think people signed on with me just so they could see her a couple times a year. Any popularity I have at all, she’s the reason for it.”

Irene has since passed away, but talking to Larry, it’s evident his love for her lives on. And rumor has it, when we were courting him for the collaboration on this collection, what sold him on it was a piece we mocked up featuring his painting ‘Moonstruck’ on a jean jacket we named – you guessed it – ‘Good Night, Irene’.