Dennis's profile
Dennis Gray 2015
Watercolor is the last thing in the world I expected to be involved in. My vision of myself was that of oil painter living by the water and going insane from licking the turpentine. Reality is my best friend. Black and white photography and the darkroom smell of hypo remained my passion for a lot of years. Being the last person with crystals and cellulose, I gave in to the digital camera. The expense is minimum and the world could be manipulated with little trouble. Watercolors started after years of suit and tie and dealing with suburban people that had reached their highest level of incompetence and my wife shoving me into a neighbor’s house that had a watercolor teacher. It was Monday night: they were drinking red wine, eating dark chocolate and people my age talking about sex, so I stayed.
I took to watercolors quickly. I am a slow painter and certainly not wispy-washy. Always, I have a camera. I use photograph to capture the core image and to set composition. My drawings are loosely scripted. Rejecting the classic rules [?] of the medium, I muscle my way through a painting, by erasing the image to fit my will. Intuitively, and sometimes in desperation, I work to keep my layered colors translucent and bold. It is ordinary for me to use my photograph to convey my imagery.
My primary themes and premises are:
Reflections: How much information our eye can distinguish, yet how little reaches the brain to be processed. In the past 2 years I have expanded this to reflections in museums.
Chesapeake Bay: My Grandfather was subsistence waterman. From his skiff he trout lined for crabs [using chicken necks], short pole tong for oysters and trapping muskrat in the marsh. The past 41 years I have continued and enhanced these types of experiences with friends on Smith Island, MD. Recently I have expanded these experiences to Deal, Wenona and Holland Islands, MD.
Baltimore City: Row houses and the diversity of the architectural designs, symmetry and of course, their cornices. I am very fond of the corner stores fronts are how they reflect the world about them. Besides, Bawl-t-more is my native tongue and I know the city and harbor’s history very well.
My work has been described as: [go figure]: Unaffected Cerebral Art that is Evocatively Realistic
.
Giclée prints of my work have been sold in coffee shops and contributed to charity; since I had had trouble parting with my originals…art was my other identity. I am ready now to show and relinquish my grasp on my paintings.
Watercolor is the last thing in the world I expected to be involved in. My vision of myself was that of oil painter living by the water and going insane from licking the turpentine. Reality is my best friend. Black and white photography and the darkroom smell of hypo remained my passion for a lot of years. Being the last person with crystals and cellulose, I gave in to the digital camera. The expense is minimum and the world could be manipulated with little trouble. Watercolors started after years of suit and tie and dealing with suburban people that had reached their highest level of incompetence and my wife shoving me into a neighbor’s house that had a watercolor teacher. It was Monday night: they were drinking red wine, eating dark chocolate and people my age talking about sex, so I stayed.
I took to watercolors quickly. I am a slow painter and certainly not wispy-washy. Always, I have a camera. I use photograph to capture the core image and to set composition. My drawings are loosely scripted. Rejecting the classic rules [?] of the medium, I muscle my way through a painting, by erasing the image to fit my will. Intuitively, and sometimes in desperation, I work to keep my layered colors translucent and bold. It is ordinary for me to use my photograph to convey my imagery.
My primary themes and premises are:
Reflections: How much information our eye can distinguish, yet how little reaches the brain to be processed. In the past 2 years I have expanded this to reflections in museums.
Chesapeake Bay: My Grandfather was subsistence waterman. From his skiff he trout lined for crabs [using chicken necks], short pole tong for oysters and trapping muskrat in the marsh. The past 41 years I have continued and enhanced these types of experiences with friends on Smith Island, MD. Recently I have expanded these experiences to Deal, Wenona and Holland Islands, MD.
Baltimore City: Row houses and the diversity of the architectural designs, symmetry and of course, their cornices. I am very fond of the corner stores fronts are how they reflect the world about them. Besides, Bawl-t-more is my native tongue and I know the city and harbor’s history very well.
My work has been described as: [go figure]: Unaffected Cerebral Art that is Evocatively Realistic
.
Giclée prints of my work have been sold in coffee shops and contributed to charity; since I had had trouble parting with my originals…art was my other identity. I am ready now to show and relinquish my grasp on my paintings.
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