Dennis Hollingsworth

Aaron's Visit

Aaron made it to Tossa from Madrid via train and bus for a twenty hour visit.

That's... pretty... frickin'... amazing.

(BLOGPOST UPDATED)

The thought of tape recording our conversation came to mind and I let it waft away. (How craven it would be to do that.) But our conversations are very good, the best. Jawboning at a high level.

The critical eye. He talked of the changes in the different kinds of paintings (old school, clustering expanses in the large paintings, the all over flatness in some of them...) and he talked of color. He talked about fleshiness and and the recovery of thinness (Joanne Greenbaum called it an "opening up" in a recent email). We talked about scale... or at least I talked about it to get his perspective.

This is the best I can do now by a recollection.

Gifts: a Peter Halley book (Aaron's review: lite in the pants -my words, his sentiment) and two huge ARCO catalogs. Muy bien. What a gent.

I took the pic of Aaron's painting "Blue Room" (top of the blog post) from these catalogs. Aaron installed a project room for his gallery in San Antonio, FineSilver Gallery.
I wish I could have seen it.

UPDATE:
Aaron sent me a few more pics of his Arco installation:

I'm not sure of the title, but I think it's "Sidelsip".

And this one, "Epic" in the foreground. And in the background, one of his wave paintings.

Aaron left Madrid after the ETA bombing (the Basque Separatist Terrorists) and as he returned to Madrid to board his plane home, a high rise building burned in a way that reminded everyone of 9-11. Pretty dramatic, to be sure.

But this pales next to the drama that is unfolding now. Aaron got the news (on his cell, on our walk home right after we had dinner here in Tossa) that he is a new father! He and his wife Sharon have been waiting to adopt a baby for a long time now, lots of ups and downs along the way. We imagine that Sharon greeted him as he deplaned at the airport in Houston with this bundle:

Joy Engel Parazette
Born 02/10/05
6 lbs 5.5 oz.
19 inches

UPDATE:

?Cari?a!