Lockwood "Woody" Dennis (American, 1937-2012). "Emerson Place, Magnolia" oil on canvas, 2007. Signed in lower left; signed again with inventory number, title, and date on verso. A delightful painting by American artist Lockwood Dennis portraying West Emerson Place in the Magnolia neighborhood of Seattle, Washington. Zooming automobiles drive up a highway ramp on a verdant hill with a maroon-colored train chugging along below. Above is a neighborhood of colorful houses boasting hues of lemon-yellow, bubble-gum pink, periwinkle, and burnt orange, all surrounded by leafy trees as another arched ramp is shown at the right. Dennis is perhaps best known for his works that depict classic automobiles and other people movers. Paintings like this example were very much informed by Dennis' woodcuts for which he took great inspiration from vintage cast-metal toy cars, trucks, and construction vehicles, comic art, Japanese woodblock prints, and WPA era industrial design. Size: 20" W x 17" H (50.8 cm x 43.2 cm)
Lockwood "Woody" Dennis was driven to paint throughout his 45 year career. Painting was the most personal and rewarding artistic endeavor for Dennis. Each canvas reveals new aspects about him as a person - his approaches to life, the environment, and art. During the early years, Dennis was most influenced by the works of Post-Impressionist pioneers of early Modernism such as Cezanne and Matisse. In time, Dennis developed a graphic style informed by the style and imagery he created for his woodblock prints.
Lockwood 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 continues, "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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#185649
Condition
Signed in lower left; signed again with inventory number, title, and date on verso. Some fraying with hanging strings to edges of canvas on verso; none of which affects painting. Painting is otherwise in overall excellent condition.