| Look closer. What do you
see?Colors,
of course, and sometimes obscure lines. We knew that. But what else?In
Denny McCoy's paintings, light and hue meet in lingering, glowing associations.
Everything alters slightly as the viewer moves in relation to the canvas,
or as natural light shifts. Focus on one area, and the optical experience
blurs in another.Yes,
but what does the artist expect the viewer to see?"I
have no control over that," says McCoy, who recently moved to Wimberley
from Austin. "If there's an obligation there, it's for me to do the work
as refined as I can. I can't guess what other people are thinking. I've
been around enough to know they will be thinking of all sorts of things.
If it's beautiful enough and I get it right, they are going to see it."For
McCoy, who trained in Ohio and Missouri during the 1960s and '70s while
conceptual art was in the ascendant, painting remains an expressive medium."It's
still the idea of illusion, the thing that painting has that other art
forms don't have," he says. "You can put something up there that can trick
and fool, and that's good. For me, it's a very meditative thing. I like
to spend a lot of time looking and figuring things out."The
artist, who shows his art at D Berman Gallery, lived in Los Angeles for
years before moving to Austin. So why join the exodus of artists to relatively
pastoral Wimberley?"It's
a little quieter," he says. "So I look forward to whatever is next in
the work. That kind of quiet, meditative stuff — Wimberley is good
for that."Peace.
Meditation. Distance. Light. All these qualities come through in McCoy's
paintings. One last element — beauty — is essential to his
vocation."It's
important that it's beautiful," he says. "There's not much of that today.
The place where I find solace is beauty. It's so consistently true."
- Michael Barnes
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