art treatise
complex art and a fascinating life
Dennis Schaefer strives for vibrancy, boldness and a pursuit of “truth”
first subjects was the iconic trees at Fort Fisher, which he says
moved him during a visit to the historic site.
In his series of paintings from Fort Fisher, trees, ground, sky,
setting, structure and movement are broken apart and put back
together using distinct swaths of intensely contrasting colors. Long
brushstrokes of a rich, swarthy red add dimension to winding,
stretching tree trunks otherwise composed in neutral whites, tans
and browns.
The dramatically bent live oaks have a lively and knowing per-sonality
in Schaefer’s imagining. In one of these images, the vibrant
patchwork color pattern seems to convey the active, almost violent,
interaction between the oaks and the constant offshore winds that
give them their shape.
In another of Schaefer’s Fort Fisher images, bushes and other
foliage peek through the long, thin trunks, appearing as abstracted
white dots amid wild greens and blues laid down in thick, geomet-ric
strokes. These small, soft white dots are in stark contrast to the
primary reds and blues that frame them.
In another, composed in neutral earth tones and depicted in
front of a calm, pale-blue sky, the trees flow languidly to the side. In
this painting, they seem to stretch slowly toward each other, recall-ing
limbs upon waking, or the reaching hand of a loved one.
Schaefer has been working in paint since the 1970s, experiment-ing
along the way with other mediums, including plaster and cut
paper. While he worked in watercolors and oils earlier in his career,
Schaefer’s contemporary practice is predominantly in acrylic paints.
Color is the primary focus in all of his works, and acrylic grants him
more freedom to manipulate saturation and texture.
The artist was intrigued and moved to paint early on by Fauvism,
the first of the 20th-century French avant-garde movements, which
emphasized straight-out-of-the-bottle colors and flattened picture
planes.
Dennis Schaefer frequently paints from black-and-white photos,
as he does here with his latest work, Jump, Jive and Wail, 24 x 20
inches, acrylic on canvas. Right: Fort Fisher #3, 24 x 20 inches,
acrylic on canvas.
By Kathryn Manis
D
ENNIS SCHAEFER has served in the military, and
been a magazine editor and writer, psychothera-pist,
corporate man, law student, and a martial
arts teacher, achieving a fourth-degree black belt.
He has lived in many places, visited several oth-ers,
learned Chinese, and taught himself quantum
physics. He has set a goal to run 50 miles, and made it to 38 so far.
Through all of this life experience, Schaefer has also been an
artist. And his painting reflects both the richness and diversity of his
life, and his passion and curiosity for the world around him.
He describes his work as motivated by synthesis: identifying and
celebrating the points at which seemingly disparate things, like
quantum physics and color theory, overlap and coalesce. Schaefer
has not received formal artistic training, learning instead through
interest, study, and practice. But his life partner, mentor, critic,
coach, and biggest supporter, Mary, points out that he is a “student
of the arts” in every way.
“If you looked at our coffee table you would find at least 25 art
books, which he will voraciously study,” Mary says. “He’s a very inter-esting
man, and a perpetual student.”
Although he has been an artist for many years while pursuing
other interests, Schaefer didn’t begin painting in earnest until he
and Mary moved to Wilmington about five years ago. One of his
PHOTO BY ALLISON POTTER
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WBM june 2017