Lot 15
**Originally Listed At $350**
Lockwood "Woody" Dennis (American, 1937-2012). "House 30" oil on canvas, 2009. Unsigned with house number on top periphery. A quiet enigma rendered in thick strokes and solemn tones, "House 30" distills the suburban vernacular into something poetic and elemental. Painted in 2009, late in Lockwood Dennis's career, the canvas presents a simplified frontal view of a solitary house - its square facade and blackened window flanked by towering trees that burn with autumnal rust and ochre. The structure, reduced to shadow and mass, seems to emerge from memory rather than direct observation. A dusky roof hangs over a pale stucco body, all blurred and softened by Dennis's impasto brushwork. A narrow green lawn separates the house from the pinkish-gray sidewalk below, and at the center, a round splash of white suggests a path or portal, inviting but opaque. The composition is framed like a stage, the foreground flat, the space compressed. Size: 10" W x 8" H (25.4 cm x 20.3 cm)
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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#194176
- Condition: Painting is in excellent overall condition. Unsigned with house number on top periphery.
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