Artist Dean Larson: Telling Urban Stories in Shadow and Light

Local artist Dean Larson's works will be featured at the Triton Museum of Art from now through Dec. 7, 2025.

Contemporary realist Dean Larson’s paintings invite you not just to look, but to enter a story. You wonder: Is the bicyclist outside the all-night corner store buying a lottery ticket? What are the workmen on the scaffolding working building? Are the pedestrians on a San Francisco street hurrying home on a Friday afternoon looking forward to a summer weekend?

The San Francisco street scene with the long shadows is in Larson’s painting,“Urban Light,” which won first place last year in the Triton Museum’s annual art competition, Triton Salon.

Larson’s current show at the Triton, “Urban Visions: Life in Motion,” features urban scenes that we walk by daily without noticing — corner stores, construction workers, rainy streets. Larson’s mastery of light, shadow and color transforms these ordinary sights into emotional narratives.

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Rain is another favorite subject with Larson.

“I like the rain,” he said, “because when you get the reflections, you have so much material to work with.”

Larson grew up in Palmer, Alaska. He can’t remember a time when he wasn’t making art.

“I just loved drawing and painting, always,” he said. “In my spare time, that’s what I did.”

He went on to get his B.A. from Willamette University in Oregon and attended graduate school at the Schuler School of Fine Arts in Baltimore, Md.

Alaskan artist Fred Machetanz — known for his arctic wildlife and scenic painting — was an early mentor and encouraged Larson’s artistic development. His best friend was Machetanz’s son.

“Whenever I would go to his house to play basketball. I would bring a painting along, and he would look at it and give me suggestions,” said Larson.

Although the two artists’ subject matter is quite different, Machetanz had a big influence on Larson’s use of color — one color specifically: blue.

“He [Machetanz] always said that blue was basic to all darks,” Larson said. “It was also part of the method he learned from one of his teachers, Maxfield Parrish.* I also love the blue period of Picasso. Growing up in Alaska, blue was pretty much the only color we saw over the long winters.”

While Larson’s work isn’t limited to urban landscapes, his home, San Francisco, provides a lot of his subjects. The San Francisco War Memorial Opera House, the century-old Café Tosca in North Beach, Mission Dolores Park, a ballet studio, Market Street, a corner store near his home.

There is one painting in the Triton show that’s an exception to the rest of the work shown, although it, too, is an increasingly familiar part of America’s urban landscape: Deposition. The picture shows a young man being dragged away by ICE agents. The victim is shown in the same position as the crucified Jesus in Michealangelo’s sculpture, “Pieta.”

“It’s a play on words,” said Larson. “Deposition is when the body is ‘deposed’ for burial, but it’s also when you get arrested, you have your sworn statement.”

Like Larson’s other work, Deposition also tells us a story, although it’s not a pleasant one.

“Paint what you love and [also] paint what you hate,” said Larson.

Local museums like the Triton are important for showing controversial work such as Deposition that might not be accepted by commercial galleries.

“Private galleries are wonderful,” said Larson, “but they all have their own agenda, work that they’re looking for to sell. But work that’s a protest work or something like that is not the sort of thing they’re going to put in a gallery. I work with the John Kent’s gallery in San Francisco, and John is the one who found this museum.

“I’m grateful as an artist to have a space like this to show the work that you [the artist] want to show,” he continued, “and subject matter that you are most passionate about. I’m really grateful to Vanessa, Preston and Brian, and that it just worked out to be able to do this.”

Urban Visions: Life in Motion runs through Dec. 7, 2025. There will be a free artist’s reception on Saturday, Aug. 30, from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. For more information, visit tritonmuseum.org.

*Maxfield Parrish (1870–1966) was an American painter and illustrator known for his use of vivid color. The color Parrish Blue was named after him.

Carolyn Schuk can be reached at carolyn@santaclaraweekly.com.