1969  Dallas, Texas

Joy and Sorrow

Little sis, I can’t hold on to the thought that it’s already been a year since you left us.  Your death is an abstraction that lives in the form of a furtive dove that appears only momentarily by surprise at every thought I have of you, like a magician’s revealing gesture. It’s an illusion, a blur of fluttering wings beating the air madly, escaping this mortal plane, and impossible to grab hold of.  Your absence is excruciatingly hard to understand, I just want to let you know.  But first, before I’m pulled away again by this riptide, let me tell you once more that I love you, always have, since the day we brought you home from Hope Cottage in Dallas.  You were six months old; I was nine years into my life.  Our parents, Bob and Yvonne, were giants in their decision to adopt and change everything for the better.  They were optimists, plain and simple.   On the day you arrived to your new home, my horizons expanded with an instantaneous velocity of exuberance reserved only for astronauts and their rockets.   That combustion of joy, brighter than the sun itself, released a new energy.  It was the flash point of a little boy becoming a brand new big brother.  That moment changed everything and still resonates in me today.  I felt it this morning, in fact, forty four years later, that intensity which holds deep and lives within my core.

  

I failed you on so many levels and that’s what makes all of this so hard.  I could have done better, but there were too many miles between us and I was raising a family.  I thought our phone calls were enough. Dumb, I know. Now I look back and see that I was wrong.  I could have manned-up, been the big brother that fit the bill, but I became weary after so many years of putting out family fires.  I was worn down between the manic joy and depths of sorrow that were laid before me.  I’m sorry that I did not board a plane to come out, grab you, and get you the help you needed, despite the drama, and the protests. 

I’m still putting the puzzle together and it will take an ocean of time.  Distance is hard whether it’s measured in miles or mortality.  Today I focus on the good that was between us. You’ll never know how happy I am that we had a good laugh together the day before you left, that’s a phone call I'll always cherish.  Maybe you do know.  It’s funny how something as simple as that can make it all just a little better.  I love you.

The Dandelion Building concept: a self-regenerating, culture disseminating structure.

When I sleep I often dream of architecture.  In these dreams I’m typically wandering around empty spaces of all types, from run-down theaters to unfamiliar homes, or sometimes it might be a desolate gas station or an abandoned office building.  No two structures are ever alike and I only visit them once.   Rarely do I see other people in these architectural manifestations.  My buildings are vacant (except for my participation and observation) and they all tend to inhabit mysterious landscapes as well. 

Not too long ago, as I descended into my dream world in my bathysphere of sleep, I reached the bottom layers of my dream strata and found myself standing before a tall white tower. It reached as high as any skyscraper, and it breathed and regenerated, as if it were a living thing.  In fact, it was a living thing.  The tower grew from within and layers of glass and stone emerged from its surface, ultimately shedding.  As they dried, the near weightless stone and glass fragments fell lightly into the windy current and were carried away. These “seeds” traveled for miles, eventually landing, taking root, and new buildings (even cities) would sprout again.  To my surprise, these exfoliated parts not only held the physical attributes of the structure itself, but they also contained the ideas, cultures, and human experience of the building’s occupants.  This is the truth; I saw it all with my own sleep-laden eyes. 

Architecture can be defined as the physical definition of space, but without human participation, a building exists only as a shell. In a way, we occupants are the souls of buildings and we do seed the world outside with our grand family histories, our diligent work, and with an accumulation of day-to-day experiences.  Our perceptions are born and nurtured in our homes and in our places of work.  We proclaim our own humanity to the world through our voices, our mobility, and of course, through the internet.  The spaces we inhabit are the incubators of our dreams.  These are the environments we build in which to rejuvenate and contemplate our lives. 

The Dandelion Building model expresses this idea of a self-regenerating building.  Internal layers of the building’s core move toward and breach the surface in flat planes, eventually breaking off, and are then swept away with the wind, disseminating all that comprises that building and its occupants to the far reaches of the globe.  The challenge with this design was to depict a sense of motion on a static form.  The chiseled corner and its adjacent narrow side depict the primary source of the building’s exfoliation and striking point of a head wind. This wind slowly erodes the corner, moving the building’s core fragments down along the broad sides where they break off and are carried away to their new destinations.

 Home for the Holidays

oil on panel

9" x 12"

(sold)

For Studio Gallery's consideration...

 A Double Batch of Frosting

oil on panel

14" x 18"
(sold)

 

Your Diet is Over

oil on panel

6" x 6"

 The Architect

(sold)

Here are a few more collages to add to the mix.  Now it's back to painting again for the new year!

 Love and War

 The Night Circus

The Hardy Boys Meet Death

 Diabolical

 I'm taking a little break from painting until January so I can play around with a bit of collage work.  These are all mounted on thick ply and clear-coated in epoxy for a glossy, hard surface.  They are all different sizes, but are approximately in the 7" x 8" range.  They are selling for $150 each.

 Hungry Mouths
(sold)

 Lion on Fire
(sold)

 Odalisque
(sold)

 Sanctuary

 The Arrival of Progress

 The Show Off
(sold)

 The Evolution of Design

 Turtle Surfing the Cosmos

Solace
(sold)

 Memories of Green

16" x 20"

oil on panel

sold

My current series of ocean paintings...

 Adrift

16" x 20"

oil on panel

sold

Waterline

16" x 20"

oil on panel

sold

 

 Secret World

16" x 20"

oil on panel

sold

 Salinity Now

36" x 48"

oil on panel

$4500

 Green Swell

16" x 20"

oil on panel

sold

Fathom

16" x 20"

oil on panel

sold

Under Nancy's Big Tree

oil on panel

1990

One of my favorite paintings finds a home after 22 years.  A few weeks ago I received an email from a woman named Naomi, asking if I was the same Denny Holland who painted the work above.  Seems she remembered it hanging in the law firm she worked in back in the 90's.  (At the time this painting was being rented out through the SFMOMA Rental Galley- it was one of my most popular paintings, having been rented out for a solid ten years until I got it back about five years ago.)  She was just starting out her law career and didn't have the money to buy the painting.  It hung outside her office and it left after three months.

At a recent event at the Rental Gallery (now called the Artists' Gallery), Naomi asked the staff if they knew of the painting and who the artist was.  The painting was still on her mind after all these years.  Fortunately, she spoke with someone who's worked at the gallery long enough to remember the painting based on Naomi's description.   It was the tree branch notched into the corner that sparked memories and brought things into light.  After an internet search, a few emails, and a lovely two hour studio visit, I'm happy to say this work has a new home. 

A lot of my work that is sold is gone forever, there are pieces that I will never see again.  However, I'm glad that this one- a very special painting to me for various reasons- has found a home in San Francisco with a wonderful young family who will enjoy it.  There's just something comforting in knowing that this painting is only about six miles from here and close by.