Dennis Hollingsworth

Alla Prima Quickstep

I've just finished one of two paintings I want to tackle before I leave for Los Angeles next week. These are painted on the panels shown in the recnet posts.

It's black painting along the lines of the one called "Silent" (posted 16 September, "Weekend Warrior"). As a black field painting, it's a hard one to photograph. I usually take some satisfaction in the ability of my work to evade the camera (with mixed feelings), and this one does as much as the others or more. This shot is a raking shot, the perspectival forces hidden by the crop.

As an alla prima method, I want to paint in the wet state of the paint. I like the test of it all, the clock ticking, decisions have to be made. This is in the face of the kind of work I used to find in my post art school context: artwork that's more of a fabrication, whose conceptual coordinates are plotted and decisions are largely made before you saw the artwork itself.

The thing is that inthe early days, I started with work that was painted with colors that took the longest to dry. And now, as I'm painting with darker colors, like black and umbers.... these colors dry fast, forming skins within twenty four hours, and sometimes sooner, if the cross section is thinner... twelve hours.

All of this brings me full circle a little: I'm spending some time, more time, before I lay paint onto surface... thinking about how I'm going to go about it. I'm painting it a few times in my head, like planning chess several chess moves into the game. And no matter how many "chess moves" I plot, I have to be able to abandon the plan for the facts on the ground as I find myself into the middle of the experience.