Lockwood "Woody" Dennis (American, 1937-2012). "Two Cars, Trolley, Building" oil on canvas, 1992. Signed on lower right. Signature, title, date and inventory number on the verso. A marvelous painting by Lockwood Dennis presenting a Surrealist-inspired composition featuring three man-made vehicles before a five-story urban building rising from a grassy field that demonstrates a surprising contrast between the man-made and the natural worlds. Dennis is perhaps best known for his works that depict classic automobiles and other people movers. Here he includes a blue car (perhaps a Volkswagon Beetle), the front end of a red sedan, and a green trolley car in a field with a red-roofed white building in the background - all beneath a golden sky dotted by a couple of puffy clouds. Dennis loved to experience the world around him - even everyday things. In his words, "The impetus to paint is always an experience - a specific place, weather, ordinary things remembered. A celebration of just being here, experiencing the world." A striking painting by Lockwood Dennis mounted in an attractive custom wood frame. Size: 31" L x 27" W (78.7 cm x 68.6 cm)
When describing this painting, Dennis said: "This is more implied action. It is the implied motion or relation of the vehicles. Like anime."
About the artist: 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.
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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#184128
Condition
Signed on lower right. "Two Cars, Trolley, Building '92" as well as "#226 1992 Jun Dennis" handwritten on the verso of the canvas. Mounted in attractive wood frame and fit with suspension wire.