Though Brian Dennis’ lively, energetic collages and Keith Breitfeller’s peaceful, meditative color studies aim toward very different goals, each artist achieves contexture in his work -- a coherency of form through processes of layering, overlapping, masking, and combining disparate forms and materials.

Breitfeller begins each of his works with a bright, dynamic under-painting in acrylic, which can only be glimpsed or imagined through a soft veil of color in subtle gradations of shade and intensity. Together, these layers create a tightly interlocked and balanced composition, where punctuations of contrasting color pop in syncopated rhythm against a regularized grid of heavily applied oil paint. This impasto (thick brushwork) lends an emphatic dimensionality to Breitfeller’s otherwise flat canvas. The result is a complex structure that that not only intellectually explores texture, color, and contrast, but also invites an emotional response with its gentle palette and visual tranquility. As Adeaner writing for tackad describes, “Keith Breitfeller makes quiet paintings, works that lure you with their whispers of serenity. Everyone loves a good mystery, and these do a good job of keeping their secrets.”

Dennis similarly explores texture, color, and contrast in his work, but instead of suggesting stillness or quietude, Dennis’ collages generate motion and activity.  His compositions derive their momentum from the range of materials that he incorporates -- aluminum leaf, ink, acrylic paint, and digital photographs selected not for the objects that they depict, but for the visual variety that they offer. Repeating linear patterns stand out in sharp relief against fields of rich, velvet color; smooth, reflective surfaces against pitted or mottled fragments; hard edges against organic forms; light against shadow. Dennis shapes his materials into rotating vortices in his aptly-titled Tumble Well and Deep Field series, or assemblages of angled horizontal planes that appear to break out into space. Life partners, professional partners, and complementary creative minds, Breitfeller and Dennis offer a harmonious balance in this joint exhibition of their work.