Valeri Larko

The surrounding area's industrial parks and infrastructure, much of it rusting and derelict, changed her focus from her original pursuit as a figure painter to an interpreter of urban landscape.

[3] Since the 1980s, Larko has created her paintings on site, setting up her easel in salvage yards, industrialized marshlands, under highways, on rooftops, and on city streets.

By the early 1990s, she was painting northern New Jersey's rusted bridges, derelict gas tanks, abandoned factories, and decaying docks, in works such as 1991's "BP Port, Newark".

[8] After moving to New Rochelle in 2004, proximity to New York City afforded Larko an expanded view of the urban fringe.

The Ferris-Stahl-Meyer meat processing plant, with the consent of the company president, Guillermo O. Gonzalez,[7] had become a magnet for graffiti artists from the Bronx and elsewhere around New York City.

The Ferris-Stahl-Meyer plant was demolished in November and December 2014 to make way for the Compass Residences development, a project consisting of 1,300 apartments and 46,000 square feet of retail space.

"[10] Prominent New York graffiti artists who have contributed to the art on the Ferris-Stahl-Meyer building's walls, have recognized their images in Larko's paintings.

[12] With the conclusion of the "Bronx Block" series, Larko resumed her focus on New York's broader urban fringe, finding subjects in its boroughs and in its greater metropolitan area, including new imagery from her original point of reference, industrial New Jersey.

She also depicted signs of urban sprawl such as fast food restaurants, gas stations, webs of utility wires, and the spread of expressways.

[19] As a teacher, Larko has been a member of the faculty of the Visual Art Center of New Jersey in Summit since 1993, where she teaches Landscape Painting.