Yin and yang

Dennis Colligan’s abstract acrylic canvases, on view at the Thomas Gallery in New Hope through May 20, investigate the horizons of the inner landscape.

By: Jodi Thompson
   The Thomas Gallery is pure New Hope: exposed beams, wide-plank floors, classical music flowing out onto the street, where pots of pansies bask in the sun. Displayed inside is the work of various area artists: swirling glass bowls, nudes in watercolors and sheet metal, a large oil of sunbathers at the Jersey shore and the requisite watercolors of Bucks County farmhouses.

"Ascendant" by Chester County resident Dennis Colligan uses a horizontal line as a focal point.

   Sharing this charming space are 15 abstract acrylic canvases from Chester County resident Dennis Colligan, his first solo exhibition in New Hope. The Thomas Gallery will present "Inner Horizons" May 5 through 20. The show is Mr. Colligan’s attempt to investigate the horizons of the inner landscape.
   "Those horizons may represent challenges, goals, hopes, dreams, realizations, understandings, fears and desires," he says.
   Each painting contains a horizontal element as a focal point. Mr. Colligan says each piece begins with horizontal bands.
   "Around the horizontal elements are wavy bits that represent life force and energy," he says. "I’m trying to express emotional, intellectual and spiritual energy in the wavy bits surrounding the horizontal elements."
   The colors, shapes and textures of the abstract works are reminiscent of nature, specifically, the American Southwest. Mr. Colligan lived in Santa Fe, N.M., for several years and admits to a fascination with the desert landscape, as well as aboriginal dot paintings.
   The Australian dot paintings focus on symbols used to designate people and things. When it is brought to the artist’s attention that the horizontal band in his work, "Transformation #1," seems to hold symbols or hieroglyphs, he insists they are not deliberate.

Each painting contains a horizontal element as a focal point. Mr. Colligan says each piece begins with horizontal bands.

   "Unintentional stuff may come out that you may not be conscious of," he says.
   The cryptic message in the gray band simply results from texture the artist works into his pieces.
   "The textures that seem to lie beneath the surface are an intentional effort on my part to explore the ineffable, explore that which we sense but can’t connect with, or talk about or know," he says. "The six to 12 layers of paint gives it a glow. What’s behind is as important as what’s in front."
   He employs gesso to create textural layers. He paints over nylon netting in certain places and then removes it to add a cellular quality.
   "We’re constantly aware of the cellular shapes and the fibrous shapes and textures that our bodies are made out of," he says. "We don’t think about those things. Drawing an abstract image on canvas, that’s one of the places this imagery comes from."
   Mr. Colligan derives his abstract imagery from two sources: the body’s physical structures and a slightly more mysterious source.
   "Abstract imagery is a synthesis of physical and metaphysical," he says. "So when those two elements combine, that’s when I feel it’s a successful piece."
   Mr. Colligan has developed a work method that serves him well.
   "When I’m working, I try not to be too conscious of what I’m doing. I try not to be too self-conscious and just let the work come out," he says. "There is the metaphysical imagery that seeps in from a place that is behind or underneath. A place that we all sense in some way, but that isn’t quite in focus, that we connect with on a very basic level, but remains mysterious and largely inaccessible to us. For me, this is what abstract imagery is about: a connection, a reference, a communication with these sources of imagery."

The colors, shapes and textures of Mr. Colligan’s abstract works are reminiscent of nature, specifically, the American Southwest.

   When these channels to the depths of his mind open up, he allows his eyes to become what he terms projectors onto the canvas.
   "Your eyes, instead of taking in imagery, project it out onto the blank screen." It is a process for which he is grateful. "The scariest thing in the world to me is a blank canvas."
   To stem that fear, Mr. Colligan doesn’t title a piece before it is painted, although there may be instances when he wants to bring an intellectual thought to fruition.
   "Sometimes I’m on autopilot and just start moving paint around on the canvas," he says. "What I’m trying to get at comes up slowly, in stages. So a title for a piece might come before, during or after I paint it. It’s a mysterious process to me, this titling thing."
   In "Blue Thought," he attempts to depict the thought process. He ponders the 30-by-40 inch canvas he calls the "poster child for the show."
   "It almost doesn’t matter to me what the thought is," he says. "The colors and the imagery are as much about visual presentation as about expression."
   Mr. Colligan mixes strong and subtle elements in a conscious effort to make his pieces interesting from a distance and up close.
   "Proximity and distance work on each other in life," he says. "Art is an expression of life."
   He stops during the painting process to step back and get some perspective of the effect that texture and detail may have on the larger picture. He strives to find harmony between the large and subtle elements in his work. "It’s about balance."
   He finds balance in his marriage as well. His wife, artist Debra Hope Colligan, paints landscapes in oils on relatively small canvases. Ms. Colligan’s work is hanging on the walls of the Thomas Gallery, too. The couple’s work is quite different.
   "She paints real-life landscapes," Mr. Colligan says. "I paint abstracts from the inner landscape. We’re yin and yang."
   Inner Horizons, the work of Dennis Colligan, will be exhibited May 5-20 at the Thomas Gallery, 19 N. Main St., New Hope; opening reception, May 5, 6-9 p.m. Gallery hours: 10:30 a.m.-6 p.m. daily, closed Tuesdays. For information, call (215) 862-1769.