Dennis Bertram

I compose paintings with imagery evocative of houses and buildings, used like building blocks, their differing arrangements responding to disparate ideas. The impossibility of making sound important decisions because of pervasive faulty information, competing interests, psychological pressure, is reflected in complex, dense patterns within paintings. The “scaffold” paintings are about extension and connectivity, structures clinging in nodes along scaffolding as if neural pathways, social networks or the universe connected through cosmic forces, reaching out to secure strength through those alliances, extending beyond the picture plane.The structures, as “skyships,” are arranged in clusters, some bouquet-like, free-floating, falling or traveling within an indeterminate space. In the “reclaim” paintings, their incarnate nature is in full fruition, unbound, abandoning their primal domain to invade and physically deface, dominate naturalistic paintings, and assimilate in form and hue the conquered.The paintings are painted with professional grade oils on canvas, hardboard or wood. The oil color palette varies. Some have a limited palette of phthalocyanine blue, Old Holland vleesoker and gele oker licht, Winsor & Newton blue black and titanium white. Other media used in some of the paintings are gold leaf, acrylic, graphite and ink. Some paintings are combined with copper and various types of stone. Paint thinner, Turpenoid Natural®, sandpaper and scraping are used to deface paintings.