Dennis Hollingsworth

Modalities

Let's take a look at the latest:

Various Lighting Conditions:
Early Morning Light, Springtime LA.
South Interior Studio Wall, North Facing Window.
Two 300 Watt incandescent Floods Eight Feet Above and in Front.
1. Curtains open.
2. 500 Watt Task to the Right, Flash, Curtains Closed.
3. 500 Watt Task to the Right, No Flash, Curtains Closed.
4. Curtains Closed.

Mapping.

Standard Shot.

What happened:

Four passes followed one after the other, each touch false, one after the other hitting flat notes as I tamped down my frustration along the way. Each time, a new skin was floated over, obliterating the aborted attempt, forming new strata of pigment, a sacraficial monochrome base becoming evermore fat and colorfully complicated.

At the end of a day of this, my final hours ticking away with a stopping point looming, I began to think as I loaded my tools with the remaining batch of mixed green paint: "Last chance. Will I get it this time? Or will I have to go home with a mess in the studio to be aborted when I walk in the next morning?"

And then hard black lines went down, driven by purposefully vague figural directions, skipping one schema and opting for another in mid stroke. It finally felt/looked good. This, I know the instant it happens, hands full of loaded tools. Then, I prepared a knife with the last of the batch of warm creamy white... then a flash (!) and every joule of energy spent in applying the tool was right, good, the sweet spot.

I worked all day for that brief moment. And what was good, was also primitive and undeveloped. Every subsequent action had to preserve that grace and build upon it in a way that accentuated what was special about the painting in the first place. This took me another day to bring it all home.

Time to move on.