Lot 128
Lockwood "Woody" Dennis (American, 1937-2012). "House 11" oil on canvas, 2008. Signed and dated with house and inventory number on verso. A spectral hush settles over the scene in "House 11", where a solitary white home floats like a memory against a sky flushed with rose and dusk. Painted in 2008, this intimate canvas by Lockwood Dennis captures the quiet dignity of American domestic architecture - rendered not with photographic clarity but with emotion, abstraction, and reverence for place. With its steep gable, columned porch, and symmetrical facade, the house stands firm yet dreamlike, anchored between a towering tree and the softened geometry of its surroundings. Dennis outlines its form with painterly force, allowing shadow and suggestion to do as much work as line. Deep blues and purples pool beneath windows and eaves, creating a sense of interior depth and emotional gravity. The saturated foreground - green, violet, even a stroke of yellow - pulses like a footpath through memory. Size: 10" W x 8" H (25.4 cm x 20.3 cm)
As in much of Dennis's late work, the painting walks the edge between presence and absence. There are no people, only the house itself - as witness, as vessel, as symbol. In its stillness, "House 11" becomes a meditation on the passing of time and the places that persist within us, long after we have gone.
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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#194182
- Condition: Painting is in excellent overall condition. Signed and dated with house and inventory number on verso. House and inventory number also inscribed on upper edge.
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