Lot 74
**Originally Listed At $350**
Lockwood "Woody" Dennis (American, 1937-2012). "Dorothy Lake" oil on canvas, 2002. Signed at lower right and dated on verso. A rhythmic meditation on wilderness, memory, and form, "Dorothy Lake" transforms the alpine majesty of Colorado's Indian Peaks into a cascading symphony of ochre, violet, and mossy green. Painted in 2002, this intimate canvas by Lockwood Dennis channels his painterly yet graphic hand into a vision of the southern high country, where Lake Dorothy rests like a glacial secret nestled between sky-piercing ridges and sun-washed stone. The composition plays with perspective and abstraction, transforming granite peaks and sloping ridgelines into sculptural volumes, bending under the weight of color and shadow. The terrain is rendered in sweeping, interlocking curves that guide the eye upward and inward, as if ascending a trail that never quite reveals its summit. Soft apricot skies bathe the mountains in warmth, while patches of pale ice and cool shadow hint at snowmelt and stillness. Size: 1" L x 14" W x 11" H (2.5 cm x 35.6 cm x 27.9 cm)
Here, the natural world is distilled to essence - not a literal place but a remembered one, felt through gesture and hue. Though best known for his depictions of the Pacific Northwest, Dennis ventured often into the Rockies, and "Dorothy Lake" is among the works that reflects his lifelong fascination with the American landscape as a place of presence and reverie. As he wrote: "The impetus to paint is always an experience - a specific place, weather, ordinary things remembered." Rooted in the legacies of Post-Impressionism and modernist woodblock printing, Dennis's visual language embraces bold outlines, flattened planes, and emotive color. His style merges the tactile immediacy of plein air with the memory-soaked lyricism of reflection. In "Dorothy Lake", the land is not mapped but evoked - a lived experience, animated on canvas.
Lockwood "Woody" Dennis was driven to paint throughout his 45-year career and each canvas reveals new aspects about him as a person - his approaches to life, the environment, and art. During the early years, Woody was most influenced by the works of Post-Impressionist pioneers of early Modernism such as Cezanne and Matisse. As he evolved, Woody developed a graphic style that was informed by the style and imagery he created for his woodblock prints.
Dennis was quite eloquent and insightful when asked about his art. The following is an excerpt from the "On Impetus" section of his "Philosophical Musings on Painting": "The impetus to paint is always an experience - a specific place, weather, ordinary things remembered. A celebration of just being here, experiencing the world. The experience itself is somehow lost in the process, and, anyway, its not intended that it should be conveyed. The result is a picture animated by that experience."
Dennis continued, "A painting starts with an exuberance. It's good to be alive. The work is a wonderful place. The feeling seems to cover everything, but it relates especially to past experiences, beginning further back than I can remember. It becomes specific in associations with past experiences: Portland, Eastern Washington, Africa; but not with an exact description. The memory of a precise place and time - a moment of past reality is too terrible to bear, there is such a sense of loss, of things gone forever. So it is a present experience, based on the past. And perhaps the cartoon character adds the levity to remove it from the past, or 'animate' it in the present."
Lockwood Dennis paintings have been collected by the following museums and organizations: Microsoft Corporation, Redmond, Washington; Seattle Art Commission, Seattle, Washington; Hallie Ford Museum of Art, Salem, Oregon; Tacoma Art Museum, Tacoma, Washington; Swedish Medical Center Foundation, Seattle, Washington; Museum of History and Industry, Seattle, Washington; Jefferson Museum of Art and History, Port Townsend, Washington; Whitman College, Walla Walla, Washington; Museum of Northwest Art, La Conner, Washington; Clallam County Historical Society, Port Angeles, Washington; Bainbridge Island Art Museum, Winslow, Washington; US Library of Congress, Washington, DC; US State Department, Washington, DC.
Provenance: Lockwood Dennis Art Estate, Boulder, Colorado, USA
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#194166
- Condition: Painting is in excellent overall condition. Signed at lower right and dated on verso.
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