Dennis Hollingsworth

(borontosaurus)

I shot the jpegs on this one fast at the end of the day, a little rushed. So I have to reshoot for a later post. Here it is in minature so you can read the overall layout.

As I was writing in the previous post, I had a tough time with the proportions. The shapes were slagging off to both sides. There is something like a contraposto that I look for, a proportion of massing and counterbalancing. After slogging away, hoping to turn a corner that rescues virture from vice, I face the facts and scrape it off to try again. This time, I hang a mrrror and hammer in a few guidlines, massing in silhouette.

The trouble is, the literal representation even as wispy as it was, was too constraining. Once I laid it out, I wanted to blow it away with thick paint. Later, once I was rocking and rolling, I sought to discipline the slap happiness back into the schema again. I like the tension between one state where the marks disappear into an image and the other state where the marks are so material it hurts. I'm uncomfortable either in "pure" abstraction or straight ahead representation.

Here are shots of the painting laid horizontal.

A sea of paint.

These shots are glistening too much, such is alla prima.

In a drawing, a tool is pulled, scribing a mark that makes a distinction of one against another. With paint, it's about liquidity. Paint can pool and ooze, one daub almost moves of its' own will, less a distinction and more of a conditionality. Everything is vulnerable, subject to change. A drawing makes things stationary, painting has everything in motion.

Some have said this is like sculpture, but color and its' intermixing tampers with the association.