Larry Hemmerich

Larry Hemmerich always knew that when he got closer to retirement, he would return to art. He had put his fine art education on the back burner after college to focus on making a living in advertising and sales. But luckily his work pace changed in 2013 and he moved to the desert to renew his life at age 62. As his recent exhibitions and sales make clear, he made the right choice to reinvest in his artistic talent. Now he lives in Palm Springs and has developed a following of patrons and peers who are enthusiastically embracing his desert landscape pastel drawings and paintings.

“I have an art background, but didn’t take it seriously,” says Hemmerich, who is now a member of the California Art Club and Palm Springs Arts Council. “Over the last few years, it all fell into place. I got into the right universe and everything started to align.”

The alignment Hemmerich is referring to began in December 2017 when he rented space in photographer Stephen Baumbach’s gallery and sold two pieces on opening night. After that, he launched the Larry Hemmerich Pastels Facebook page and immediately sold one more piece.

“Selling three works in one month gave me lots of confidence!” Hemmerich exclaims. “In January 2018 I walked El Paseo Street in Palm Desert to research galleries where I could show my art and found D Gallery. I exhibited there from February through June and sold more work.”

Hemmerich’s style and subject matter have earned him the right to be called a “desert artist.” He uses a rich palette of pastels to draw and “paint” landscapes that he has personally experienced while hiking in the Palm Springs area. He works from photographs taken on those hikes, which are usually off-trail and often dangerous.

“When you look at my work, it isn’t broad landscapes,” Hemmerich points out. “Because of my hiking, I capture in my art what I see close-up. I want to share what I’ve seen in places that most people will never experience.”

His work Rocks of Ages, a pastel drawing of boulders

intermixed with grasses, is one example of what Hemmerich experiences when he spends “so much time climbing over the rocks.” A similar landscape, Vortex Sunset, was recently shown at the Joshua Tree National Park (JTNP) art exhibition held at the 29 Palms Art Gallery in September. The work was one of 58 chosen from 310 submissions by 121 artists from across the desert, California and the U.S. It was Hemmerich’s first time competing in a juried show.

Hemmerich spent some time in the national park after the JTNP exhibition and immediately began his latest piece, a 12”x9” pastel on canvas based on a photo of a rock formation he took while on a hike there. “My inspiration is always the desert,” he explains. Hemmerich also found inspiration this year at a plein air workshop that he attended in the Highland Springs Resort’s lavender fields in Beaumont. Although most of his works look as if he created them en plein air, he has actually worked primarily from photographs.

“Experiencing plein air affected how I look at light and contrast,” Hemmerich recalls. “It forces you to see things differently.” He applied the technique to his Lost in Mecca Hills piece and says that it “made the painting much better as a result.”

Currently, Hemmerich is applying to other juried art shows and working on three commissioned pieces, one of which is based on a palm tree landscape drawing he recently sold titled Fly Over. The inspiration for the work was a photo Hemmerich shot while looking up at the sky from a lounge chair in his backyard. It’s a common scene in Palm Springs—tall palms stretching up into a big sky punctuated with a distant airplane—but Hemmerich’s painting reveals how such a common scene can be a beautiful thing.

Learn more about Larry Hemmerich and his work at www.larryhemmerich.com.