Lot 16
**Originally Listed At $350**
Lockwood "Woody" Dennis (American, 1937-2012). "House 19" oil on canvas, 2009. Signed and dated on verso with house number. A house stands rooted in winter stillness, its sharp gables and porch cloaked in a palette of icy blues, dusky grays, and bone-white light. Painted in 2009, "House 19" is one of Lockwood Dennis' late architectural portraits - a study not just of a building, but of the space it occupies in memory. The bare trees surrounding it stretch upward like veins, their branches echoing the crisp, angular geometry of the home itself. Dennis often returned to houses like this - modest, enigmatic structures in quiet neighborhoods, captured with clarity and abstraction in equal measure. His style, shaped by years as a woodblock printmaker, is evident in the thick outlines, flattened forms, and deliberate use of contrast. He renders the house as a silhouette against the cold - painterly yet graphic, structured yet emotional. Size: 10" W x 8" H (25.4 cm x 20.3 cm)
Set in the Pacific Northwest or possibly Colorado, where Dennis also found inspiration, this house resists specificity. It is not a portrait of a single place, but a meditation on the idea of shelter, solitude, and stillness. Like many of his compositions, it seems to exist at a threshold - between dusk and night, presence and absence, familiarity and strangeness. Dennis wrote, "The impetus to paint is always an experience - a specific place, weather, ordinary things remembered." In "House 19", that impulse is quiet and powerful. With its muted tones and stark lines, the painting holds the viewer in a moment of reflection - one where the hum of the world has gone silent, and only form, memory, and atmosphere remain.
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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#194177
- Condition: Painting is in excellent overall condition. Signed and dated on verso with house number.
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| $300 | $999 | $50 |
| $1,000 | $1,999 | $100 |
| $2,000 | $4,999 | $250 |
| $5,000 | $9,999 | $500 |
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| $100,000 | $199,999 | $10,000 |
| $200,000 + | $20,000 |