Dennis Paul Batt | 1952-2012

Dennis Paul Batt-By Jen Trute
32" x 24" | oil on linen

Most days start out the same way, the inevitable wrestle to get out of bed, the waking baptism of the shower, the morning tea ritual, feeding the mewling cat, the reach for something on the web to distract you from the task's ahead. A tragedy in the news, a celebrity off the wagon, someone's dinner on facebook, something, anything to elevate the chaos and the mundane, and give it meaning, a perspective so you can go on repeating it all again tomorrow.

Then something happens and all the props fall away, and even the morning sun can't bleach the sudden shadow in the room. That's the way it was when I learned my friend Dennis Paul Batt died.

Before I came to write this, I tried to recall if I've ever mentioned him on here before, and a quick glance through postings made me realize that I have been totally remiss. You will forgive me then (even if I cannot), as I try make amends now, as late the hour.

I probably first met him at Mosaic or Thumbprint two years ago, though I know I had seen him before that-how could you miss that face after all?
A remarkable artist himself and fierce advocate for up and coming Artists here in San Diego through his involvement with Synergy, OMA ,the creation of the San Diego Visual Artists Guild, and God knows what other pie, there was no better a champion in my corner than Dennis. In a city of no's he was one of a handful of yes's.

Whenever I was feeling crestfallen, he used to say in that very Bostonian, Jewish way of his- "look at where you're from, to some of these assholes you're sovereignty?" or "don'tchya know, your already fockin' there!?!" or "Oh, why dontcha just go paint some fockin' racehorses?" hands always grasping at air for emphasis.

At other times, when he wasn't pulling me to one side and throwing priceless bon mots, or relentlessly taking the piss out of my accent (something he never got right) he would just call me up and chat and bend my ear for an hour about the sorry state of it all, although I think he was still an idealist, but would never admit it.

He was also Jen Trute's partner, and it doesn't seem five minute's ago since I was at his home as he helped me load boxes of art materials into the car. He was always carrying boxes was Dennis-the first in and last out at events, perhaps someone should have told him to take it easy. He wouldn't have listened anyway, though perhaps it was her passing that truly, literally broke his heart. In all of this, doesn't there seem a beautiful apt romance in that?

Last year, if there was a respite from the ghastly part time job I took to make ends meet, it was morning coffee at his house, him sitting perched like a hippie Fagin amongst his collection of San Diego Art alumni that covered the walls or his crate upon crate of rocks, that he proudly displayed. I never saw a grown man so lit up over a peanut sized piece of jade, but Dennis saw potential in its rawest form.

The last time I corresponded I sent him a Christmas card in which I closed by saying, see you on the other side. I meant midnight 2011 of course, but I like to think he'd have laughed at that irony.

Thank you so much Dennis sir, it was a real honor, and no matter how we cover the walls, they shall lack color without you to see them from now on.

http://www.dennispaulbatt.com/

Legacy-an artist's general truth-new painting by David Van Gough

"Legacy-an artist's general truth"
48" x 24"
Oil on Canvas

My homage to Jen Trute-using the paints and brushes I inherited from her-a painting that infused my thoughts and feelings about an artist's legacy along with her own passions for the environment.

There's more I could say about it, but I'd rather leave part of it's mystery intact-it feels a fitting tribute in a way.
I think she would have liked it-she was certainly worthy of this artist's contemplation.

Night shifts

Providing that I don't hate it in the morning, then the piece I am calling 'Legacy-an artists general truth' is finished.

Forgive the poorly lit photo, I'll post a better one once it's dry and in daylight.

Tentative.

Tentative. That's how I've been feeling for sometime now. It may have began to percolate months ago, but probably manifested when I went to pay my respects to Jen Trute.

In that little studio of hers overlooking Oceanside bay, stacked vestiges of an artists working life condensed into boxes, unpainted canvases and medical equipment.

That it reminded me of John Liddy's post legacy, was all too much like bad de ja vu.
That arc again-that shadow.

It made me wonder what my own ramshackle legacy would be, how the final tally would be disseminated-the books, the materials, the art. When personal effects and debtors are settled, would the most I could hope for be a hidden artifact collecting dust in a thrift store corner?

So, on the day I was interviewing for my return to the bourgeois lot of a regular paycheck, I was also at Jen Trute's former studio, inheriting boxes of oil paint and brushes, stacks of canvas, volumes of art books.
Irony gluts like a bloated slug.

And yet, for all her penultimate generosity, for all my gratitude, I couldn't shake the sense of feeling like some ghastly vulture. It made me tentative, especially when I got home and unloaded the boxes.

Let me tell you that Jen Trute was as meticulous with her materials as she was her work. High quality paints were ordered into color category, whilst thousands of swatches on cards annotated mixed values, and brushes separated into jars by size and material-everything as pristine as the day she had purchased them.

It all felt a little intimidating-I felt a little unworthy of the torch being passed.

Until finally I realized the best way to break the spell, and honor her, would be to paint her-or at least an imagined portrait of her-since we were acquaintances but never met.
And what better way than to do it using the materials she lovingly procured. Here then is a progression of the new piece-"tentatively" called Red Reaper- but done very much in the spirit, honor and paint of the incomparable Jen.

I think she would have liked it.

Jen Trute-1960/2011

Whilst I am sad to admit that I never met Jen Trute in person, I knew her art.

In the past, whenever I've been too swift to dismiss the superfluous excesses of San Diego's art scene, it's always been a welcome reminder to myself that Jen Trute more than eclipsed the chasm of vacuousness and artifice, with the astonishing yardstick of her mastery.


Technically of course, she was flawless,tossing off the kind of flourishes that would leave the best of us slack jawed on the periphery, but her work also had that rare thing of conceptual clarity-never suffering the obliqueness that so often subdues the viewer, and is a perfect get out card for so many surrealist poseurs.


Despite the darker themes, her work was also as disarmingly bright and airy as the long hot summer days that she spent in her Carlsbad studio, where I paid my respects yesterday.


Like I said, I didn't know Jen,but from the meticulous way that she organized her brushes to the hundreds of carefully mixed swatches she compiled, I can tell you that she was the "real deal". So many of us are just charlatans in the incredible, remarkable wake of her work.

We are all richer for her astonishing legacy and she shall be sorely missed.