Dennis Hollingsworth

Some Paintings

Raining today, a first time in a long time. So we shut the windows, shutters too... good for what I have to do.

New Panel, freshly stretched. Hours pass and I refuse to act mechanically, movement unanimated... so I sit and watch. I sit like a donkey, on my hind, ears back, stubborn. Staring at a blank canvas.

Time is part of the task, something to contend with. Try to be nonchalant, like you don't care. Hours shrink.

Some paintings can be anticipated, nearly all but physical. Such paintings groove on, threaded to manifestation, a ship tugged steadily into port. All paintings require a feeling of contraposto, a shift of wieght and massing. Some paintings insist themselves only after your hands get dirty, after you undertake ways of working with paint that preclude many other ways. Some paintings are painted first in my head, in too many iterations... the thoughts of what I might see kept getting in the way what I was seeing. Some paintings suprise and derail the initial intention, and the drama is deciding when to jump train. And some paintings are sorry ass train wrecks, full of dreadful, desperate, pitiful decisions which nearly always ends up with salvaging actions and many thoughts of when the ultimate scrape off will occur.... and it is precisely this specific type of painting that a final saving act will pull what was once considered wreckage into something that is nearly a pristine, dewy state of nature. Miracles.