Artist Bio
Dennis Sheehan [b.1950] has work in major public & private
collections, including the White House. Sheehan paints in the Barbizon
mode with remarkable authority & faithful adherence to his 19th
century precursors. In the tradition of the Tonalist painters, Sheehan
creates landscapes of mood, affected by nature's changing seasons.
“Today,
in a cultural firmament that has been defined as Postmodern, a new
generation of American painters is returning to the old landscape
seeking a renewed vision. The cultural strategies that they employ are
as diverse as any from the past; in most cases, these painters
consciously strive to enter into a dialogue with the history of the
White Mountains art. Their work, grounded in a sophisticated
appreciation of what has come before, is in many cases deliberately
discursive with a tradition that has been all but erased twice by
historical and cultural forces.
The contemporary work of Dennis
Sheehan, for example, affords a great nineteenth-century-predecessor
George Inness. Like Inness, whose influence is consciously
acknowledged, Sheehan employs the dark palette and thickly pigmented
surfaces of the French Barbizon School. Maintaining a muted Tonalist
chromatic scheme, Sheehan, like Inness before him, has temerity to
eschew picturesque scenery-his Conway Meadows avoids any reference to
the traditional climax view of Mount Washington—in the interest of
evoking atmospherics and the appearance of the natural world as it is
observed. Optical truth combined with poetic resonance—the search for
some ineffable quality of nature beyond words –constitutes the probity
of his art. Yet, also like Inness, Sheehan’s paintings are produced in
the studio. His work is the product of the conscious distillation of
prior imagery ranging from the American Barbizon to the abstractions of
Franz Kline. For all of the references to history—and there are
multiple—there is no mistaking the artist’s debt to the more recent
past. Without the legacy of action painting, Sheehan’s art would be
less forceful and evocative than it is.”
McGrath, Robert L.
Visions in Granite; Two Hundred Years of Paintings in New Hampshire’s
White Mountains. Portsmouth: Blue Tree, 2006
A Few Meaningful Quotes
"A work of art does not appeal to the intellect, it's aim is not to instruct, but to awaken an emotion." George Inness - 1884
"Landscape
painting should not be painted for the sake of beauty alone, but
rather, through the landscape something significant may be reached,
something close to the spirit of nature. Within it should be the story
of the soul. It should resonate to a deep, sincere feeling." Alexander
Korovin - 1891
"The painterly content of a picture is greater
than the subject matter; the more the subject has been subordinated to
the pictorial form, the greater the painter." Max Liebermann - 1904
