Conci Denniston

Showroom

Conci Denniston has been painting musicians at work for a decade. They go through contorted motions to make music. For Denniston, they are good subjects for the study of emotion.

“Objects in motion, I suppose, would be more appropriately rendered by a film artist. But after I saw Marcel Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase, I realized that a figure in a painting can appear to move. In a sense Duchamp gave me permission to pursue the concept of motion in painting,” says Denniston.

“That motion is different from what you would see in a fast-film photo of a galloping horse. The horse in the photo would not appear to move. It would be caught forever static in a galloping position.

“I’m attempting to render a certain amount of motion in my paintings. Of course, that is only one of the challenges I deal with in painting.”