There are few people I know that draw and paint realistically. I had the opportunity to meet Alan Magee at one point in New York. I also had the pleasure of meeting Shannon Cannings and her family at a wedding. I first saw Alyssa Dennis’ work in a group show when we were gallery mates at Gallery Imperato some years ago.
What ties these three together for me is not only the highly developed drawing skills, but their choice of unusual subject matter: Magee with his simple, lovely, and seemingly bizarre, Cannings with her playful yet serious, and Dennis with what could, will, be made.
The first works I saw by Dennis were depictions of movement, so loose and light they seemed out of a sketchbook. Some might even mistake them for erased mistakes. Whether they were intentional or not, the artist fully committed herself to this way of depicting, applying the techniques to create fully realized works of art on canvas. In Dennis’s early images, human figures in various forms of dress are composed in a form of dance in nebulous and hazy destinations. Urban pioneers in beautiful places.