“What have I done now?” Larry East thought when he was told to report to the principal’s office in 1948.

What he had done would be a deciding factor in his life — he had won first prize in an art contest concerning fire prevention week.

“And I’ve been painting ever since,” he said. In fact, he says, he has always painted, but that prize in the second grade really gave him a push toward a lifetime avocation.

And what did he win? A day out of school and $5.

He says he paints “off and on,” sometimes going for months without putting a brush to the canvas. He’s read books about painting and taken art classes at Hinds from William Dunlap but most has been self-taught. As a child he used crayons, then later relied on acrylics, paint sticks and charcoal, but his favorite medium is oil.

Gordon Cotton is an author and historian who lives in Vicksburg.

Larry’s subjects are mostly seascapes, mountains and portraits. Sometimes he paints from photographs, but usually he thinks about the subject for a while, “work it over in my head, and then go paint. They say it’s hard to look at an empty canvas and see what you’re going to do, but it’s not for me. I’m not going to stare at an empty canvas. When I do start, I want to finish. That’s why I finish so fast.”

He hates to admit it, but he says that inspiration is sometimes a factor. On occasion he has completed a painting in an hour, and at other times he has gotten up at 2 or 3 in the morning to finish one.

Sometimes, when he neglects his art, his wife, Sarah, “gets ticked at me,” but she has used his works to decorate their home on Nailor Road, and she says she is his worst critic. She’s also an ardent fan.

His works hang on the walls of quite a few other homes, because “people come and look and buy.” He’s sold some through shows at the Firehouse Gallery, through the art association, but, “When I paint something I hate to sell it. It’s just like a baby. It’s my creation, and I’ll probably never see it again.”

Though he has a studio in the house, Larry has moved from the sun room to a closet to a room by the garage, “hoping creativity will hit me somewhere.”

For him, art is a therapy, “but sometimes when things go wrong, when I can’t get it right, it does get me agitated and it goes right in that closet. I’ll work on it later.” He figures he has about 30 unfinished.

Though art is his hobby, many know him as the proprietor of Far East Liquors on Halls Ferry Road, a company he bought into when it was a tiny little store on Clay Street. He changed location and capitalized on his last name, “and people come in often and are surprised I’m not Indian or Oriental.”

Before that he was a licensed private detective for the railroad, worked at the Corps of Engineers and with his brother in the construction business.

He has a degree in psychology from Mississippi College and has taught at Hinds, at Grand Gulf and for Packard Electric.

“I went to school, went to school, went to school,” he said. He dropped out of high school and joined the Navy where he completed his studies and said, “My education took me 20 years,” going to class wherever he was stationed or where he worked.

He never got away from his love of art. In high school, he was sketching in English class when Miss Berdon, the teacher, wanted to know what he was doing: It was her portrait. Years later, she walked into his store and asked if he remembered the incident. She still had it, she said, and not long before her death she brought him two brass candelabras as a thank you.

Art came to his rescue in boot camp when “we had to wash our clothes every night. It looked like a cattle trough out there with men washing their clothes. He washed every night for a week, then the guys found out he could draw. He drew their mothers, wives and sweethearts (from photos), “and I never had to wash clothes again.”

Under each portrait, he penned a poem, “though some people might not think I’m a poet — but I have a lot of rejection slips.”

He likes bright colors, especially blues and shades of yellow, “the color that makes you kind of crazy.” Of all his paintings, his favorite is a portrait of his wife from a photo when she was a child.

He’s a realist, a traditionalist, he said, but he never criticizes another artist’s work “because that might be the way they want them. All styles are fine.”

Larry believes his sons have artistic talents, for he remembers their drawings when they were in school. Larry Jr. is an engineer, and he can duplicate or copy; Kevin builds furniture; but Kelly claims he can only paint houses.

Of his own work, he thinks there is always room for improvement, but “if practice makes perfect, then I’ll never be perfect. If it gets to be perfect, you might as well just quit.”

He’s never had a one-man show, “and if I did, I wouldn’t show. I’ve never liked crowds — unless I see them coming into the store.”

Larry was born in Canton and the family lived in Flora and South Carolina before moving to Vicksburg in 1953. In 1961, he met Sarah Brooks from Redwood — “the best thing that ever happened to me.” They’ve been married 49 years and have three sons and six grandchildren.

His artistic skills aren’t confined to the canvas. He and Sarah had their home framed, but they did the rest. He built a sun room, and “my wife told me to build that gazebo. He said he hasn’t made a picture frame yet because he doesn’t have the patience — “and Sarah hasn’t told me to.”

“I’ve painted a lot,” he said, “and some might show up on ‘Antiques Road Show’ one day — and be worth about $2, or a dollar and a half.”