**First Time At Auction**

Lockwood "Woody" Dennis (American, 1937-2012). "Federal Building" oil on canvas, 1987. Signed on lower right. A magnificent painting of Seattle's Federal Building by Lockwood Dennis. The Federal Building is presented in all its splendor with billowing flags at each end of the roofline. True to Dennis' passion for people movers, the composition also includes two automobiles and a big blue bus. Here they share the street with a single streetlamp rising from a grassy green strip, and the entire scene glows beneath a peach-colored sky. All is delineated with Dennis' unique hybrid style - a dazzling graphic aesthetic he developed as a master woodcut printmaker combined with expressive, painterly brushwork. A fabulous painting by Dennis mounted in an attractive custom wood frame. Size: 28" L x 22" W (71.1 cm x 55.9 cm) Size (frame): 29.125" L x 23.2" W (74 cm x 58.9 cm)

About the artist: Lockwood "Woody" Dennis was driven to paint throughout his 45 year career. Painting was the most personal and rewarding artistic endeavor for Dennis. Each canvas reveals new aspects about him as a person - his approaches to life, the environment, and art. During the early years, Dennis was most influenced by the works of Post-Impressionist pioneers of early Modernism such as Cezanne and Matisse. In time, Dennis developed a graphic style informed by the style and imagery he created for his woodblock prints.

Dennis was quite eloquent and insightful when asked about his art. The following is an excerpt from the "On Impetus" section of his "Philosophical Musings on Painting": "The impetus to paint is always an experience - a specific place, weather, ordinary things remembered. A celebration of just being here, experiencing the world. The experience itself is somehow lost in the process, and, anyway, its not intended that it should be conveyed. The result is a picture animated by that experience. Dennis continues, "A painting starts with an exuberance. It's good to be alive. The work is a wonderful place. The feeling seems to cover everything, but it relates especially to past experiences, beginning further back than I can remember. It becomes specific in associations with past experiences: Portland, Eastern Washington, Africa; but not with an exact description. The memory of a precise place and time - a moment of past reality is too terrible to bear, there is such a sense of loss, of things gone forever. So it is a present experience, based on the past. And perhaps the cartoon character adds the levity to remove it from the past, or 'animate' it in the present."

Lockwood Dennis' paintings have been collected by the following museums and organizations: Microsoft Corporation, Redmond, Washington; Seattle Art Commission, Seattle, Washington; Hallie Ford Museum of Art, Salem, Oregon; Tacoma Art Museum, Tacoma, Washington; Swedish Medical Center Foundation, Seattle, Washington; Museum of History and Industry, Seattle, Washington; Jefferson Museum of Art and History, Port Townsend, Washington; Whitman College, Walla Walla, Washington; Museum of Northwest Art, La Conner, Washington; Clallam County Historical Society, Port Angeles, Washington; Bainbridge Island Art Museum, Winslow, Washington; US Library of Congress, Washington, DC; US State Department, Washington, DC.

Please note: This painting was exhibited at Davidson Galleries, Seattle, Washington as indicated by the exhibition label on the verso.

Provenance: Lockwood Dennis Art Estate, Boulder, Colorado, USA

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#184130

Overall excellent. Signed at lower right. Artist, title, date, and inventory number handwritten on verso. Davidson Galleries exhibition label attached to the verso. Mounted in custom wood frame and fit with suspension wire.