"Send in the Clown", a "Pen & Ink" "Crosshatching drawing" by Alexander
Born in the small rural town of Dermott, Arkansas, to Robert and Janie Alexander, Larry is the fourth of ten children and the second of the union of his parents. His father was a truck driver, and his mother was a beautician. Alexander began drawing at about the age of four. He never received any formal art training during any level of his schooling while growing up, as none was available in his small rural hometown. After graduating from Dermott High School in May 1971, Alexander moved to Pine Bluff, Arkansas, where he studied Architectural Residential Design at Pines Vocational Technical School, now Southeast Arkansas College. In later years he also attended Richland College in Dallas, Texas, where he studied AutoCAD.
Today, six pieces of his work from his popular "Dermott Series", a series of paintings he painted about his childhood home of Dermott, are now a part of the permanent collection at the Arts and Science Center for Southeast Arkansas in Pine Bluff, Arkansas. Alexander's work is mostly influenced by his experiences in life, such as growing up in the rural south during the 1950s and 1960s, as well as his life in Detroit, Michigan, during the 1970s and 1980s.
Alexander moved to Detroit, Michigan, after two years of school in Pine Bluff to seek employment in his chosen field. However, he was unsuccessful in the short run, and instead, he ended up finding work in a Chrysler auto assembly plant and became fascinated with the inner workings of cars. This led him to become a certified mechanic, a craft he worked at for the next seventeen years. He ultimately met and married his wife, Patricia while living in Detroit, and they moved their family to Irving, Texas, where he opened his own auto repair shop and operated it until 1991.
Encouraged by Patricia, he began using his art talent for the first time in fifteen years. His career as a professional artist can be traced back to this point as he developed his "pen and ink" style that he calls "crosshatching", and used it to create several lines of greeting cards under his, now defunct, "Alexander Greeting Cards Company" name. He coined the phrase "The Expressions Line" for his first line of greeting cards in 1991, but did not trademark the name. As a result, Hallmark Cards now has used the name on a line of their cards since 1997. His line should not be confused or associated with their product line.[6][7] Between 1991 and 1994 he created over 80 pieces of "pen and ink" fine art,[8] including "Renetta", "Girlfriends", "Cowboy Fiddler", "Young Kennedys", and "Roundup". He also used many of his drawings on his "Fine-arTshirt" T-shirt line of the mid-nineties.[9]
Alexander is also a "realist painter" who works in a variety of other mediums including oils, acrylics, and watercolors. He is a self-taught artist who chooses mostly to do exhibits in venues that provide mainstream exposure to a large variety of people such as festivals, schools, malls, libraries, banks, art institutions, and even U.S. Post Office branches on occasion.[10][11][12][13]
The Dermott Series
In early 1996 Alexander finished and released his popular "Dermott Series", a 20 piece collection of oil and acrylic paintings that offered a nostalgic look back at his childhood of growing up in rural southeast Arkansas. The paintings feature images of people, buildings, and sites of Dermott, Arkansas, such as a cotton gin, his childhood house, where he went to school, and other images. Alexander said at the time that, "I did the Dermott Series for many personal reasons, and I'm overwhelmed by the response this collection is creating here in Texas". The series includes, "Birthplace", "Where I grew up", "Picking Cotton", "Cotton Gin", "Hot Grits", "In the kitchen with mama", and the old Chicot County High School, among others.[14]
Alexander has also donated work to art departments of schools and colleges. In October 1996 at halftime at the inaugural football game, billed as the "Mobil Gridiron Classic", at Texas Stadium in Irving, Texas, Alexander presented a piece from one of his series, "The series of P.A.T.R.I.C.E", to the president, and the chancellor, of the participating colleges, respectively, Texas Southern University and the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff.[18]
The Sixties Series
Alexander's most popular Pen and Ink art series, "The Sixties Series" has been exhibited in schools, libraries, and art institutions in several places since it was completed in 1993. It consists of elaborate drawings of well known figures and events of the 1960s, such as the civil rights Selma to Montgomery marches of 1965, and portraits of Martin Luther King Jr., Lyndon Johnson, Malcolm X, Medgar Evers, and Rosa Parks. This series also covers the Vietnam War.
The theme pieces in the collection are a piece called "Composite Sixties", and one called "Composite Protests", which make up a composite of people, places and events that were prominent in the 1960s. For example, they show images of John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Richard M. Nixon, the United States presidents who served during the sixties, also J. Edgar Hoover, Jackie Kennedy, Ted Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, an image of U.S. astronauts landing on the Moon in 1969, and many of the American protests that took place during this turbulent decade, to name a few.[19]
African-American history book
In 2001, Alexander finished his first book called African-American History at a Glance, which also included several pen and ink drawings of African-Americans who have contributed substantially to the American success story. "There is a lack of input regarding African-Americans in the American history curriculum of schools all over America" Mr. Alexander says. "There are a lot of schools that offer it as a choice to students, but I think it should be a part of regular American history".
Alexander's book was used to help create a supplemental text, that was later put together by the Irving Independent School District to help improve the American history curriculum in the high schools of Irving, Texas, in 2002. His book deliberately ignores the contributions of African-Americans in the areas of sports and entertainment, as he feels they are already too well known and over-emphasized in society. Alexander says in his book that, "By no means is this an attempt to downplay the prowess of these particular individuals, or to discourage other individuals who aspire to excel in those areas. This publication is intent on bringing to the forefront, some of the African-American contributions that have historically been largely ignored".[20][21][22][23]
The Arkansas School Tours
Alexander and his cousin Lawrence "Larry" Crockett, both natives of Dermott, Arkansas, put together the first "Arkansas schools tour" in 1996, and in May of that year, visited ten schools in seven cities in four days. Crockett and his son, B.J., both traveled with Alexander on the initial tour, while they were on a one-week break from the tour of the Rodgers and HammersteinBroadway musicalCarousel, which B.J. had a role in at the time. After the first year however, the tour was continued on by Alexander alone through 2007. Alexander says he wanted to give back to his home state of Arkansas and be a blessing to the children who live there, and, because of the success of the first tour in 1996, Alexander decided to continue doing it once annually for the next ten years. Its major objective was to instill hope and encouragement in the children of Arkansas, and to aid them in making good choices during the developing stages of life. These annual visits to high schools, middle schools, and elementary schools, were also conducted to instruct and encourage children in pursuing their goals and careers in the visual arts, as well as other areas, and to stay away from illegal drugs. It was during the second tour in 1997 that Alexander incorporated his anti-drug slogan "Eradicate Drug Use Common Among Teens Everywhere" (EDUCATE). Alexander usually ended his tour with a two-day art exhibit and print signing at the Dermott, ArkansasCrawfish Festival.[24][25][26][27][28]
Religion
It seems as if God has placed a hunger and thirst inside of each of us, innately from birth, and the only way to satisfy that hunger or thirst is by seeking and ultimately finding Him. It is for the purpose of God that man was ever created in the first place. And just as no man has ever created anything that weren't for his own purpose or benefit, so it is with God. Man was created to serve God. And until we can grasp and understand that, we'll just continue to meander around, looking for physical answers, to problems, that have always been, spiritual
— Larry D. Alexander
Alexander is a devout Christian who teaches Sunday school and has also served as a Church deacon. He has taught Sunday school for several years and he also teaches through his books, online "Weekly Sunday School Lesson" commentaries, which are based on the international Sunday school lesson system, his online Book by Book Bible Study, and, his national e-mail system. He also has created a large body of artwork in Christian and biblical themes over the years, such as his paintings, "The Twenty-third Psalm Series", which are a visual depiction of the verses of Psalm 23 in the Holy Bible, "Memories of St. Paul", which is a depiction of his childhood church in Dermott, Arkansas, "Bible Stories", "The Fall of Man", a depiction of Adam and Eve after being evicted from the Garden of Eden, "Sunday Sermon", and many others.
Personal life
Alexander lives in Texas with his wife Patricia. They have four children: Ken, Leandra, Kawanna, and Patrice.
Books
Home and Church Bible study commentaries from Paul's letter to the Romans - ISBN978-1-105-66048-1
Home and Church Bible study commentaries from the books of Galatians, Ephesians, & Philippians - ISBN978-0-578-15400-8
Home and Church Bible Study Commentaries from the Book of Ezekiel - ISBN978-1-329-94443-5
Home and Church Bible Study Commentaries from the Book of Acts - ISBN978-1-365-01313-3
Sunday school lessons from the Book of the Acts of the Apostles - ISBN978-1-4116-9831-4
Sunday school lessons from the Gospel according to John Mark - ISBN978-0-615-13552-6
Sunday school lessons from the Apostle Paul's letter to the Romans - ISBN978-0-615-15342-1
Chicot County is a county located in the southeastern corner of the U.S. state of Arkansas. As of the 2020 census, the population was 10,208. The county seat is Lake Village. Chicot County is Arkansas's 10th county, formed on October 25, 1823, and named after Point Chicot on the Mississippi River. It is part of the Arkansas Delta, lowlands along the river that have been historically important as an area for large-scale cotton cultivation.
Dermott is a city in Chicot County, Arkansas, United States. The population was 2,316 at the 2010 census. Dermott was incorporated in 1890.
Pine Bluff is the 10th most populous city in the US state of Arkansas and the county seat of Jefferson County. It is the principal city of the Pine Bluff Metropolitan Statistical Area and part of the Little Rock-North Little Rock-Pine Bluff Combined Statistical Area. The population of the city was 41,253 in the 2020 census.
War Memorial Stadium is a multi-purpose stadium in Little Rock, Arkansas. The stadium is primarily used for American football and is the home stadium for the Catholic High School Rockets, the Parkview Magnet High School Patriots, and the secondary home stadium for the University of Arkansas Razorbacks. The USL League Two affiliated Little Rock Rangers hold both home games and youth academies at the stadium. The Arkansas Activities Association high school football championship games for all classifications are held at the stadium annually.
Pine Bluff High School (PBHS) is a comprehensive public high school in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, United States. It, a part of the Pine Bluff School District, is the largest of two public high schools in the Pine Bluff city limits and three public high schools in Jefferson County. Established in 1868, the school's interscholastic sports programs are one of the nation's most successful with a football national championship and one of the state's highest number of state championships in football, baseball and track and field.
Richard Berry Harrison was an actor, teacher, dramatic reader and lecturer. His parents escaped slavery and settled in Canada. He performed from a young age, studied acting in Detroit, Michigan, and became a dramatic reader and actor in the United States. He was featured on the cover of TIME magazine on March 4, 1935.
Don H. Marr is an American artist. His paintings reflect the romantic realism and seriocomic surrealism genres, while using materials such as acrylic, oil pastels and gold leaf. His pieces frequently incorporate calligraphy. His realist paintings are housed in the permanent collections of the Arkansas Arts Center, the Arkansas Historical Society, and the Biedenharn Museum in Monroe, Louisiana. In the 1960s he was commissioned to do several large public works, including "Pine Bluff Pine" for the Pine Bluff, Arkansas public library.
Irving Petlin was an American artist and painter renowned for his mastery of the pastel medium and collaborations with other artists and for his work in the "series form" in which he employed the raw materials of pastel, oil paint and unprimed linen, and found inspiration in the work of writers and poets including Primo Levi, Bruno Schulz, Paul Celan, Michael Palmer and Edmond Jabès.
The Arkansas Department of Human Services (DHS) is a state agency of Arkansas, headquartered in Donaghey Plaza South of the Donaghey Complex, a five-story building on the southwest corner of Main Street and 7th Street, in Little Rock.
Southeast Arkansas College (SEARK) is a public community college in Pine Bluff, Arkansas. Formerly a vocational-technical school, the state legislature designated the school as a college in 1991 with the name Pines Technical College. It acquired its current name in 1998.
Samuel Lee Kountz Jr. was an African-American kidney transplantation surgeon from Lexa, Arkansas. He was most distinguished for his pioneering work in the field of kidney transplantations, and in research, discoveries, and inventions in Renal Science. In 1961, while working at the Stanford University Medical Center, he performed the first successful Kidney transplant between humans who were not identical twins. Six years later, he and a team of researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, developed the prototype for the Belzer kidney perfusion machine, a device that can preserve kidneys for up to 50 hours from the time they are taken from a donor's body. It is now standard equipment in hospitals and research laboratories around the world.
The Arts and Science Center for Southeast Arkansas is a 22,000-square-foot (2,000 m2) art and science museum located at 701 Main Street in Pine Bluff, Arkansas. It includes four galleries, a 232-seat theatre, classroom space, administrative offices, vault and adequate preparatory and conservation space for the Center's current programming efforts.
'Jefferson also known as Jeff Springs and Jefferson Springs Station is an unincorporated community in the Pine Bluff metropolitan area of northwestern Jefferson County in the U.S. state of Arkansas. It is situated on the Union Pacific Railway (UP), 15.5 miles (24.9 km) northwest of Pine Bluff, the county seat, and is the home of the National Center for Toxicological Research (NCTR).
Clinton Family Portrait is an 1995 oil painting on canvas by American artist Larry D. Alexander from Dermott, Arkansas, USA. It was created in 1995 and given as a gift to then U.S. President Bill Clinton who is also a native of Arkansas. It is a unique painting in that Alexander has done very few known oil paintings. Most of his paintings are done in acrylics, and there are a few done in watercolors. This portrait is a unique blend of cartoon likeness and realism. It is now a part of the permanent collection at the Clinton Presidential Library in Little Rock, Arkansas.
Dermott High School is an accredited public high school located in the community of Dermott, Arkansas, United States. It is the only high school administered by the Dermott School District and is one of two public high schools based in Chicot County, Arkansas. The school has just over 200 students, in grades 7 through 12.
Frederick Ruple was a 20th-century Swiss-American painter, primarily of portraits. He was commissioned to paint Confederate Civil War battle scenes and murals. At times Ruple lived in Arkansas and Oklahoma where he traveled to study American Indians and early settlement in the Midwest. The Oklahoma Land Run of 1889 inspired Ruple to create his most famous painting "The Spirit of '89".
Sue Ellen Brown is an artist living in Birmingham, Alabama.
The Chicot County Training School was a historic school building at the corner of Hazel and North School Streets in Dermott, Arkansas. The single story H-shaped building was built in 1929 with funding support from the Rosenwald Fund, a major philanthropic effort to improve educational opportunities for African-Americans. The school was preceded by Dermott Baptist Industrial School, co-founded by Isaac George Bailey, and then Morris Booker High School and Memorial College. It was succeeded by Morris Booker Memorial College. The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2004. The school building collapsed and burned after being abandoned. It was delisted from the National Register in 2022.
Isaac George Bailey was an educator, Baptist minister, and member of the Arkansas legislature. He served in the Arkansas House of Representatives in 1885, representing Desha County. His photograph was taken as one of the 1885 Arkansas House members. The caption says he was a Republican and Tillar Station was his post office.
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