Lockwood Dennis (American, 1937-2012). "Santa Monica Court (Gill)" oil on canvas, 1994. Signed on lower left. A beautiful Lockwood Dennis painting featuring a classic automobile beside the Horatio West Court, a court building in Santa Monica, California designed by the famous southern California architect Irving Gill (1870-1936) who is regarded as a pioneer of modern architecture. The building and automobile are set in a lush California landscape, replete with verdant shrubbery and leafy deciduous trees beneath a pale azure-hued sky. Dennis' oeuvre was very much inspired by Japanese woodblock prints and WPA era industrial design. Dennis' "Santa Monica Court (Gill)" captivates us by presenting a magical meeting of man-made and natural treasures. Size: 16" W x 20" H (40.6 cm x 50.8 cm)

Lockwood Dennis was driven to paint throughout his 45 year career, as he found it to be the most personal and rewarding artistic endeavor. Each canvas reveals new aspects about him as a person - his approaches to life, the environment, and art. During the early years, Lockwood was most influenced by the works of Post-Impressionist pioneers of early Modernism such as Cezanne and Matisse. As Lockwood evolved, he developed a signature graphic style.

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.

Lockwood 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."

The following is an excerpt from Dennis' public lecture at the Northwind Art Center in Port Townsend, Washington (April 2012): "For me, my painting began with trying to recall my Peace Corp trip to Africa. We were living in Wapato (Eastern Washington), so I painted our surroundings there in much the same way as Africa. I first painted Port Townsend when some friends invited us to house sit for them and introduced us to many good friends here. When we moved to Port Townsend in 1975, we were living at Fort Worden and I painted from sketches of the gun emplacement bunkers and cliffs. I did a lot of water color paintings with artist Bill Nelson around town and out on the coast (La Push). I used the lithography printing studio of J. Albers to produce 245 editions. And then friend and University of Washington professor Michael Spafford got me started on woodblock prints which I continued to do after we move to our current house in 1990. I did 385 editions of 20 or more each. This changed the paintings a lot, for better or worse. The important thing for me is making a space you can move through. I use places that I find exciting that way. The hills of Africa, Fort Worden, San Francisco, Onomichi; and industrial sites, all of which remind me of where I grew up in Portland. It's about maintaining the mystery of the unexplored.

In the paintings, I work around a center to which everything is related. My wife showed me this in a Monet lily pond on our first date (1960). And I work with layers, based on Cezanne. The subject of my master's of art thesis was about how to conceptualize space in a flat picture with linguistic theory."

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

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#184116

Signed on lower left. Verso inscribed "'Gill Variation' 10" with signature, year, and inventory number. In overall excellent condition.