Dennis Hollingsworth

Ahora

I had to put this painting ahead of most everything else since we returned from Florence. It was kind of brutal, shoving myself down the timeline like that... but accepting the opportunity to show a couple of paintings at Miguel Marcos' gallery meant that I had to squeeze the calendar a bit. Where once I planned months of margin, the wiggle room dwindled to weeks and now days. Note to self: keep a loose calendar as much as possible.

Maybe painting is like fishing, where intention is so diffused and dilated that it is at the moment one lets go, the strike hits and the game is on. This means that determination has to be used obliquely like we use peripheral vision, else a noisy and determined mindset will scare the fish away.

Pacing. Staring. Stalking. Headwork before the muscle twitch.

I didn't want to blog along the way, sorry people. I spent alot of time doubting, pacing, planning and revising in my head... blogging that process live.... I'm not ready for it, if I ever do it at all. I had to fly without instruments for a while and make sure this painting gets done. I will be painting single mindedly from now until shortly before I screw the panels into the crates that Ramon will build and deliver, mid August.

I've been pushing and pulling this particular language (clouds and pillows of paint, splotching into a picture plane) for about a year now.

I keep erasing everything I write about this painting.

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Maybe I should wait.

When I finished this today, I rewarded myself with a snorkel in the shoals north of Tossa. A little rock climbing. The water: isolated pools behind rocks. Deep, very deep for what otherwise looks shallow. Lots of debris in the water and more than a few jellyfish along the way. It wasn't as spectacular as I had anticipated but it was good to marinate in the brine after sitting in the studio for so long.

I'm going to blow out a log jam of blogposts tonight.

And then I get into another painting.