Larry Grob / Pastel Land, Sea, and Mountainscapes

Larry claims to have seen the world through an artist’s lens, as long as he can remember. One day he grabbed some pastels, and a door opened to a new form of creativity.

This is how he describes it:

“If I were to try and create a thought-cloud of Creativity, Here is some of the hard-gained wisdom I would put into it: “Think. Question. Think again. Try anew. Trust your intuition. Know that there’s more than one answer. Just try something. Don’t expect to be totally satisfied. Never stop ideating. Take time to stop—really stop. And look—really look. Be open. Observe. Absorb like a sponge. Focus on where things intersect. Look for convergences. Follow your gut. Don’t be afraid to fail.”

Seen this way, Creativity stretches well beyond the artistic, and it has served me well in unexpected places and ways. Throughout my career—from map-making to design and graphics, to shaping and growing a business, serving our clients, managing resources, staying afloat, weathering storms, solving problems and creating new opportunities—I tapped into that thought-cloud time and again.

And when I shifted, mid-career, to promoting sustainability and activating peoples’ connections with the land, I drew again from Creativity. I turned to painting and writing to inspire us all to approach our surroundings with a lighter hand. 

Somewhere along the line, I discovered the ‘touch’ of pastels. And since then, I have reveled in the freshness of my medium, the sight of images emerging from the paper, the textures and colors of my surfaces, and that feeling of drawing and painting all at once…the sweet spot of pastels, I like to think. With the wind on my face, hand out steadying the easel, and racing to follow the light, I know. I am in the right place.”