Larry Goode

Born in 1961 at Ft Benning Georgia

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“If cotton candy hired Francis Bacon to do interior design.”

— as one critic once described his work, a line Goode happily embraces.

Austin-based artist Larry Goode creates paintings that balance playfulness and introspection — a fusion of whimsy, irony, and surrealism that reflects both childhood memory and adult reflection. His layered, abstract compositions often echo weathered walls or old roadside signs — visual metaphors for the accumulation, or erosion, of shared experience over time. Through these, Goode investigates what lies beneath the surface — psychologically, emotionally, and in the landscapes we inhabit.

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Spending his youth on a ranch east of Dallas and in the Texas Hill Country, Goode developed a lasting fascination with the vastness of the sky, shifting light, and unpredictability of weather, all of which shape his sense of place and perception. His practice often revisits dream imagery, religious iconography, and symbolic motifs — eyes, bicycles, dogs — rendered through hesitant lines and bold color fields that hover between abstraction and narrative.

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Goode holds a BFA from The University of Texas at Austin and an MFA from Texas State University.

His work has been featured in the HBO series The Leftovers and acquired by the Art Institute of Chicago’s Special Collections Library, Seton Hospital’s permanent collection, and private collections. He was featured at the Austin-Bergstrom International Airport, and the Austin Public Library, among others.

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He currently lives and works in Austin, Texas.

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