About Roger Dennis
LANDSCAPE AND LANDSCAPE-ABSTRACTS ARE MY CURRENT INTEREST. Dartmoor and local scenes that I know well feature as starting points. They are mainly oils, ranging in size from about 4 x 3 feet to around A3 (or 16 x 12 inches).
FIGURE COMPOSITIONS of fictional symbolic characters in invented settings. "THE FISHERBOY SETS SAIL" is the title of the sequence. These are now "resting" in the studio, to be added to at a later date.
PLANS FOR THE YEAR INCLUDE A RETURN TO WATERCOLOUR AND MIXED MEDIA. This will continue the landscape interest, but also revisit flowers and still life and, probably, figure and portrait work. Some examples of past work of this sort are available in the studio.
DRAWING is another interest, charcoal mainly at the moment, but also ink line-and-wash.
WORKSHOPS AND ART TUITION. I tutor several groups, divided between OIL AND ACRYLIC PAINTING, including weekly workshops in my studio in Chudleigh, and WATERCOLOURS.
ROGER DENNIS: BIOGRAPHICAL OUTLINE
My First Two Decades
1951 born Bournemouth, early childhood Swanage, then in the New Forest, which I enjoyed, and later school in Devon, which I did not. At my primary school I was entered for The Royal Drawing Society Exhibition, and won a Highly Commended distinction for a night scene of figures hanging-out under a lamp post. My secondary school looked on Art as a very second-rate subject, but I not only managed to study 'A' level Art, much by myself, but also to pass with an A grade.
The Nineteen Seventies
1969 I went to St. Andrews University, Fife, Scotland, and in 1973 I gained an Honours degree in Philosophy. I went there to read English Literature, but it turned out to be Anglo Saxon. Instead, I co-founded, edited, illustrated and contributed prose and verse to a Literary-Arts magazine called “Entry.”
I continued to live in Fife until 1979 practising a variety of craft and art activities, including textiles and topographical line drawings. I was employed as a Small-Finds Draughtsman by Perth High Street Archaeological Dig and also as an Artist drawing reconstruction views of the medieval city. I started exhibiting paintings, abstracts and figurative, in St. Andrews Festival and elsewhere.
In 1979 I moved to Somerset, where I produced another series of local line drawings as prints and greetings cards, and had lodgings in return for work helping convert a studio for watercolourist and printmaker Lucy Willis and family.
The Eighties
1982 Devon, Dartington College, and the H.E. qualification in “Art and Design in a Social Context,” with a special interest in murals and public art. Then continued painting practice [see list of exhibitions on following page,] along with creative writing and a Writing Apprenticeship Bursary from the Arvon Foundation [1985], and forays into Teaching English as a Foreign Language.
Since 1983 I have lived in Pax Cottage, Ashburton, with partner artist and teacher Nicole Georgiana Townshend. In 1985 we spent five weeks staying with friends who were working in the Seychelles. We brought back a portfolio of work, which, together with trips to southern France, provided work for several exhibitions.
The Nineties
1991 Adult Education Art Tutor in Brixham and Totnes, eventually employed in ten different institutions, comprising A.E. Centres, Community College Departments, and the W.E.A. Mainly teaching Watercolours, but also Oils, Art History, Drawing-and-Painting, and ‘A’ level English. 5 years as Art Course Moderator for Open College Network Southwest. Nominated for a National Adult Tutors Award at Brixham Community College. Also self-employed partner [with Nicole] in Literacy (Dyslexia) Tuition Service.
My painting continued, with special interests in local landscape and in mastering watercolour and colour mixing-and-manipulation.
The Twentifirst Century
2007/8 Art Workshops in First Floor Studio, Clay Door, Old Pottery Court, Chudleigh, and other private tutoring to groups in Foxhole at Dartington, in Yealmpton, and South Brent.
The death of my mother at the end of 2003 and winding up her family home caused a pause in art activity. For a while I painted some figurative “narratives” of invented symbolic nature, but am now back to landscape and landscape based abstracts in oils, also acrylic, and some large watercolours.
Recent exhibition 2008 "The Roger Dennis Studio Painters," Harbour House Gallery, Kingsbridge, of my and my students’ work.
