Painter of the Month

Dennis Bernhardt

Take a look at Dennis. Dennis Bernhardt. When he learned we thought so much of his sophisticated stripe paintings, that one would be 'Painting of the Month' a huge smile broke out on his face. He got his finger to touch words from a list on his lap-tray. 'Excited.' Then: 'Call my sister.' 'Call Tim.' I'm not sure if he was referring to me or the guy who runs Project Freedom, the place where Dennis lives. We've asked this guy to let us start a program at Project Freedom but he won't return our calls. Dennis works with us at our studio on the campus of Princeton University. Before I sketch out some thoughts on why heads of 'disabilities' organizations don't return our calls, let's appreciate Dennis.

When he managed to wrangle a ride to our Princeton studio program it was good from the beginning. Dennis is a really fine guy. Upbeat, affectionate, patient, and as we were to discover through his painting: extremely discerning, exacting, sophisticated and disciplined. His first paintings did not reveal this. For a number of sessions Dennis was, it seemed, simply working out with the techniques. He tried shapes, color blending, the laser, various finishes. When he was satisfied he had tried everything, seen how it all worked and what he could do with it, he left the exercise phase and dropped into gear. With no knowledge of art history, no fear of the abstract, Dennis began his stripe paintings.

Very exacting, the stripe format is among the purest ways to let color operate free of competing elements. Freed like this, the color can sing like musical notes. Stripe paintings avoid reference to objects, and all obvious forms of emotion. This doesn't mean they don't have emotion. It's a finer kind, that asks us to be quiet, to simply look, to see, to feel.

In a media manic multi-tasking world where more buttons, more multiple functions are seen as a plus, a stripe painting is as keen and singular as the composer touching single notes on a piano. Listening to them. Letting them hang in the air.

Dennis, without knowing it, is in good company. Famous heavyweight painters who have done notable stripe paintings, now famous in art history, include Frank Stella, Kenneth Noland, Agnes Martin, and Barnet Newman. Each of these giants of abstract painting understood stripes are a powerful way of minimizing drawing so color can do its thing. Dennis painted all sorts of shapes before he honed in on his stripe series. He'd painted an image of the window of our studio. He'd created large single color fields with one or two small marks at the top center or to one edge. Good grief, he was onto advanced painting at its highest level, the small marks existing on the edge of a vastly larger, open field.

You can imagine how cool it is for us to watch Dennis reveal such beautifully controlled creativity. Dennis, non-verbal, using a wheelchair, erroneously thought by some, to be, ah, less than fully with it? Wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Dennis operates as high or higher than the average person strolling on the sidewalks of Nassau Street down below our studio.

As Dennis' new power, his deep pleasure and satisfaction, his pride, his making some real cash from real work, fills us with happiness, the fact that there are so many others out there who could free themselves if they had A·R·T, but can't, because lots of those in charge of the 'disabilities' facilities won't return our calls.

I think we'll save that short sketch for next time. Instead let's just enjoy Dennis, and the refined vision he can now share with us.