Norway artist LaRosa featured at Main Street Gallery

NORWAY — Main Street Art Gallery continues its summer season with a First Friday Reception from 5 to 7 p.m. Friday, Aug. 2.
Main Street Gallery exhibits the work of fine artists and artisans living and working in western Maine. August’s featured artist is Mike LaRosa.
LaRosa was born and raised in Syracuse, N.Y., and moved to Maine in 2013. He holds a doctor of pharmacy degree from Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia and a degree in engineering and management from Clarkson University in Potsdam, N.Y. Over the years he has focused his attention on disciplines including cooking, guitar, chess and painting. LaRosa’s painting has been a consistent outlet for the past 15 years. “I’d like to think my work is impactful and sort of musical,” he said. “Each piece having a tempo, a rhythm, and a melody.”
His subject matter comes from an array of influences including a love and appreciation of the rugged Maine landscape, Italian and Spanish architecture, and a love of guitar styles, modern design and pop culture. His latest works have been a study of combining landscapes with the technique of hard-edge painting (popularized in the late 1950s and ’60s). The results lend his paintings playfulness, abstraction and whimsy.
“I am interested in un-constructing images and leaving them un-constructed,” he said. “I treat every work as if it’s my last. For me, that’s everything. There’s never a day I feel I don’t have anything to say on the canvas. We live in an impactful world and I want to be a reflection of that. I always feel my best work is yet to come.”
LaRosa lives with his wife Laura and their yellow Lab Louie in Norway.
The Main Street Gallery, 426 Main St., is open 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Friday, and 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday. For more information visit westernmaineartgroup.org.