HEARTWOOD

© Courtesy of the Artist

HEARTWOOD 1989

Jeffrey Dennis (1958 – )

Details

Dimension
228 X 213 CM
Media
OIL ON CANVAS (SIX PANELS)
Accession number
P5893

Summary

There is a strongly English, verbal and narrative, wit to Dennis’s painting where scale is played with, reducing the figures to characters whose story intrigues and eludes. The greenness of Dennis’s country is vivid, beyond the natural, and the landscape made from peas. The artist wrote of this work ‘For a landscape, one might choose peas or beans, flowers or a stained wall. But it is important that the chosen surface be a sturdy trampoline for the figures and images that will populate it. Even in our imagination. Gravity can only temporarily defied. The source of some of the imagery in my paintings is a rather inconsequential photographic diary I accumulate. However mundane, something photographed seems to acquire instant generality (infinitely reproducible). To re-paint it is to re-particularise it; to recognise it again, with difficulty.

New Voices New Works from the British Council Collection, The British Council 1992