Dennis Hollingsworth

Then and Now

A couple of pairings to see where I was and am, now nearly thirty years spanning...

Left: "Mosquito", 1995, #1, 18" x 14"
Right: "with one eye you see the world", 2023, #627, 32" x 18-1/2"

kind of human

kind of human
2023
#628
32" x 18-1/2"
Oil and Acrylic on Canvas over Wood Panel

with one eye you see the world

with one eye you see the world
2023
#627
32" x 18-1/2"
Oil and Acrylic on Canvas over Wood Panel

Gibbous

Outside the bar on Chrystie we sat last evening, Henry and I. A cozy bar. A cigarette together. I looked up to the moon, framed by the tree line of Roosevelt Park, a very nice NYC/LES evening. A big gibbous moon, just so. For a moment, I flashed on this icon of a sight, big-moon-city-sky, once the very instance of naive art, and now so ubiquitous in the galleries. The stigma no longer applies, in the emergent generation of artists.

Heart on the sleeve.

Or is it "heart"?

All this in a flash, in a moment. So much to chew over. Then Henry says, plopping, "Looks like it lost its' hat". A big smile as always, this one with a twinkle. Henry adorned with a short exposition, impossible to recall in detail exactly. Wish I could. He sung it, almost. It was a mixed stream of how did it lose his hat and he's got to get into the shop and buy another one and how he had to buy a felt one like he had.

Boy, Mr. Moon needs his hat.

I looked down to Henry's hat, sitting on a chair. Purple felt, barely a brim, a combination of Gandalf and top hat, stovepiping up to a little dome, a red inner band tied with yellow string at its ends together with a neat bow knot.

Monadology

Back in '96, I started to paint using the nature of impasto paint as a prime driving motive force. It all happened in a moment when my palette knife lifted from a lump of paint on canvas. Immediately, a tendril formed. Marveling at the beautiful resolution of paint in tension... in space, away from the plane of illusion, I did it again and again until the surface of the hemisphere was expended. the result was a whole. It seemed elemental, the basis of a vocabulary of paint application that respected the corporeal nature of this particular variety of paint. I called it a monad, recalling what had initially attracted me then about the ideas of Leibniz, what little I knew and could comprehend at the time. Fortunately, everything I've learned about the ideas of Leibniz since then has confirmed the good fortune of identifying this approach to painting with the ideas from this unique philosopher.

Today, the YouTube algorithm has delivered this video to me. I'm quite delighted with the presentation. Succinct and to the point.

He described an aspect that surprised me, that I hadn't known before, the idea about the immateriality of monads, of the universe. Since I've invested a lot of credence to the reassertion of the materiality of media, in particular within the realm of impasto oil paint, I'm surprised by a possible connection to Conceptual Art, the idea that art can be -or is, as those pioneers would have it in the 60's and 70's- a set of instructions. As I've been informed by Leevark's presentation, the road back to the grounded reality of materiality would have to be mediated by the Supreme Monad.

That's Good News.

invigoration of suffering

invigoration of suffering
2023
#626
32" x 18-1/2"
Oil and Acrylic on Canvas over Wood Panel

languor of the idyllic

languor of the idyllic
2023
#625
32" x 18-1/2"
Oil and Acrylic on Canvas over Wood Panel