Dennis Hollingsworth

Happenstance

Every so often, I move paint with my tools and I look down at a happenstance of beauty. Sometimes, perhaps many times.. there is more beauty on the tool than the surface upon which I intend to deliver it. The trick is how to paint intentionally, with the things you find outside your intention.

So often, I stumble over amazing things.... then I try to stumble again, mostly with sad results. What was the name of the Greek painter who was so tasked with painting clouds, that he threw his paint soaked rags onto the canvas and... LO!

(If you know, tell me in the comment button below, ok?)

But, you just can't expect to turn the corner everyday... and, LO! The second best thing is to turn the revelation into part of the arsenal of daub/mark making: the monads, the prints, the flings, the screed, the impact craters, the stomps...

So this is a shot of the current painting, about three quarters of the way through maybe. I'm driving down Maximalist Road, and there's no U-Turn allowed. Right about this moment, I have to ramp it up and go way over the top before I can hope to get anywhere good. I like this jpeg image better than when I'm standing in front of it. When I'm standing in front of it, it seems to be weak, too simple and plain.

I haven't read the Inferno by Dante... but I've heard that to get through Hell, he had to jump through Satan's anus. Is this correct? (Signal me at the comments, too.) Jumping through the nastiest anus imaginable is the parallel of the moment of throwing the rag in frustration. (Maybe not, the former is willful... the other is will, broken.)

Anyway, it's jump time.