Dennis Hollingsworth

Summer 2006

I'm Barcelona Bound.

Or more accurately, I'm bound for Tossa.

Ok. Even more accurately-yet-perhaps-now clumsily:

Catalunyan bound.

I have a show scheduled for the end of summer, a solo show for the first time on Spanish soil.

I will try not to dwell on the impact of the fact that I was born in Spain and that I've been gone since I was three years old; or that there is a post-Franco art world that played super-catch-up with the postmodern turn (thus favoring the design arts that admriably lived up to the task of rebuilding Spain away from the dictatorial legacy -and ironically breathing new life into modernist design); or that this is the country of Velasquez and Ribera and especially the great Goya... and therefore my vivid memory of visiting the Prado when I was twelve or thirteen and I got to see the Caprichos and finally, "Satrun, Devouring his Children" where my eye/mind became full of painting and the work that I am doing now is a partial fulfillment of that -for me- eternal moment; or that even though I have enjoyed undeniable success as a painter, I realize after all that I am still a cock-a-roach toiling in the fields or studios, yet another face in the crowd as an artist... or, as I have heard certain moderately famous art stars say at one time, that I have not yet been "branded" in any real meaning of the term (vulgar though this term may be in certain circles).

But then again, digression is so self indulgent and I am breaking one of my cardinal rules: "Don't let them know that you're humgry."

I'll just put all that out of my mind. Because what should be foremost is the internal story of my painting, the intrinsic life of where I have been and where I am going... especially now that I have essentially achieved a goal I had set for myself in grad school: to build a language and a world of my own ...in painting.

It's called the big now-what.

There's a big meantime, too. I'm looking forward to snorkeling again, getting fit after the past nine months of sedentary studio life, after nine months of American foodstuff, stuffed by the exceptional quantities and tantalizing cultural diversity customarily found here in this part of the world. I remember when young Alberto was here for the first month back last September, he was gobbling everything in sight. I told him then, exploiting the big bad reputation we Yanks have over there in the EU: "If you don't control your apetite here in America, America will control you.". But I'm not one to talk.

Where was I?

Or rather, where will I be? My flight departs Sunday, June 18th and I'll be back to the Codolar", the cove nearest our house, the cove near where my friend Kiko was raised, the place where I had scattered my father's ashes. (Tomorrow is Father's Day in a world where all the fathers are gone.) I'll be blogging there of course, but we don't have our telephone service there anymore. It looks like I'll be a bandwidth pirate, looking for signals in the air.

Soooooo.

What's the deal this summer? The show is to be set in the last week of September at Miguel Marcos Gallery. Stephanie can't be with me the whole time, She's got her hands full at Guess?. Another summer apart, I know. But we will be together there for two weeks in July.

The time frame is brutally short. I've ordered panels from my carpenter and friend, Ramon. I'm bringing canvas that I bought today at ROARK art supply in L.A. so I can sidestep the high cost of art supplies in Barcelona, not to mentioin the piss poor exchange rate. I've got a repair job to do in Nice, France sometime in July (a monad smashed as the painting came loose in the crate during delvery). I've got a date to critique an archtiecture studio for my friend Gerry Smulevich next week. My buddies in Tossa will stifle their frustration as I go hermit with each painting, and then exact a social revenge in between with savage drink and frolic. Or so it seems to me.

Did I say that I'm looking forward to snorkeling again?