Dennis Hollingsworth

just so

just so
2023
#634
36" x 96" or 48" x 72"*
Oil and Acrylic on Canvas over Wood Panel

* NOTA BENE

I have a strong "rule" not to rotate a canvas while I am painting it. In my entire oeuvre, I've embraced constraints as an implicit critique against a prevailing over swollen legacy of regarding art as a world of boundless possibilities. While it seems innocent enough, a healthy encouragement to attempt the impossible, to break out of boxes... in our Information Age, such an attitude has slipped into the back of our collective mind and has grown like weeds, forcing us into our current Zombified Hall of Mirror condition. Instead of spinning the canvas, hoping like a gambler for a lucky strike, I look for the happy accidents in other places. Irony rules our world: the boundless tends to wither possibilities, the boundaries can open the door to the boundless. In particular, I look what is possible within the surface tension of impasto paint and the gravity of its mass while all the while, my compass heading is fixed. Up is up and down is down. However...

This particular conjunctive pair of panels were indeed painted under the wide spread horizontally constrained format. But when I set the painting up to photograph and rack it in my studio, I flashed on the possibility to conjoin them in another configuration. My rule *evidently* [insert the winky emoticon here] applies only while I am engaged in the act of painting. It was an elegant rotation about an axis in the middle of my stamped signature, the left panel swinging down and over 270 degrees, while the whole assembly rotated port 90 degrees with the left becoming the right and the right becoming the left. ( I sense a twinge of a connection to the politics of our current geo-political period. Let's let this gun remain on the table for now. Silos must remain separate to remain silos... despite the occasional leak here and there.) Providence aligned all significant features of the painting while keeping its spirit intact. Post-hoc rotation is A-OKAY.