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Passover
Artist
Dennis Blagg
(American, born 1951)
Date1997
MediumOil on canvas
DimensionsUnframed: 42 × 120 1/8 in. (106.68 × 305.12 cm)
Framed: 44 × 121 7/8 × 3 in. (111.76 × 309.56 × 7.62 cm)
Framed: 44 × 121 7/8 × 3 in. (111.76 × 309.56 × 7.62 cm)
Credit LineCollection of the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Museum purchase
Object number1998.8
Status
Not on viewCopyright© Dennis Blagg
Category
Label TextThe painter Dennis Blagg has made anonymous roadside views of southwest Texas his subject since the 1990s. Working from his own observations and recording his chosen sites with his camera at dusk or in the early morning half-light, Blagg often merges pictorial elements from several photographs into one painting. The usual result is an idealized panoramic scene viewed from a low vantage point, with distinguished light and dark areas and textural details of the arid Texas terrain. Passover, 1997, exemplifies this style. In the work, Blagg’s palette consists mostly of the smoky blue, gray green, yellow, brown, beige, and rose tones that best capture the area around Big Bend National Park.
The big sky and rugged topography, combined with Blagg’s subtle use of color, light, perspective, and texture, evoke legendary and mythic conceptions of Texas. At the same time, with each brushstroke the painting becomes less pristine and more painterly—each shrub, cactus, and rock formation breaks down into a series of individual abstract marks and shapes. Other aspects of the painting, such as the almost mystical light, lend the painting a hyper-real appearance.
A longtime resident of Fort Worth, Blagg was born in Oklahoma City but grew up in Seminole, Texas, south of Lubbock. He is a self-taught artist, and his subject matter clearly comes from his personal experience of growing up in West Texas. The idea that his paintings are autobiographical is intriguing, considering that they are uninhabited by people; this gives his work multilayered meaning outside of the pure aesthetic and formal qualities of traditional landscape painting. Passover conveys the feeling of the vastness and power of nature, but also the immediacy of real space and time.
The big sky and rugged topography, combined with Blagg’s subtle use of color, light, perspective, and texture, evoke legendary and mythic conceptions of Texas. At the same time, with each brushstroke the painting becomes less pristine and more painterly—each shrub, cactus, and rock formation breaks down into a series of individual abstract marks and shapes. Other aspects of the painting, such as the almost mystical light, lend the painting a hyper-real appearance.
A longtime resident of Fort Worth, Blagg was born in Oklahoma City but grew up in Seminole, Texas, south of Lubbock. He is a self-taught artist, and his subject matter clearly comes from his personal experience of growing up in West Texas. The idea that his paintings are autobiographical is intriguing, considering that they are uninhabited by people; this gives his work multilayered meaning outside of the pure aesthetic and formal qualities of traditional landscape painting. Passover conveys the feeling of the vastness and power of nature, but also the immediacy of real space and time.