HAMLETT DOBBINS | The Green of Friendship

HAMLETT DOBBINS The Green of Friendship

Usually once or twice a year I take a break from the larger works on canvas and turn my attention to making works on paper. Usually, the pieces are smaller and start out improvisationally and in large numbers so I can feel free to be experimental with them. These pieces are a way for me to work out shapes or patterns that have been building up in my head during the semesters when I am teaching at University.

(Over the years I have come to think of it as being like the difference between speed chess and slow chess.) When I start the drawings the music is loud and I'm dancing around, splashing paint, and letting the fluid inks puddle and slowly dry. Eventually the loosey-goosey gestural marks are answered/followed by more righty-tighty, contemplative patterns and rhythms.

While the sources for the drawings are obscured, two things are very transparent here: I've always loved this particular shade of FW's Olive Green acrylic ink and I have been thinking a lot about how light works in the old-growth forest in Overton Park where I will often walk with my family. Finally, the name The Green of Friendship comes from my old teacher, friend, and collaborator, David Dunlap, whose four-color flag is made up of "the orange of delight, the white of surrender, the green of friendship, and the other green of friendship. --- HD 12/23

Tennessee native Hamlett Dobbins received his BA in Painting from the University of Memphis and his MA and MFA from the University of Iowa. He currently lives and works in Memphis, where he teaches full-time at the University of Memphis. He has participated in exhibitions across the United States and abroad, including the Frist Center for Visual Arts, Nashville; Whitespace Atlanta; The Mississippi Museum of Art, Oxford; University of North Carolina, Greensboro; Louisiana Tech University, Ruston; American Academy in Rome; Cheekwood Museum of Art, Nashville. He is the recipient of awards and residencies including the ArtsAccelerator Grant, ArtsMemphis; Tennessee Arts Commission Individual Artist Grant; Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant; Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, Residency, Omaha, NE; Vermont Studio Center, Four Week Fellowship, Johnson, Vermont; and Best of Show, Arts in the Park Juried Show, Jerry Saltz, juror.

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