Smith Tower

• Woodcut

Lockwood Dennis (American, 1937–2012) was born and raised in Portland, OR. He earned a BA in Philosophy from Whitman College in Walla Walla in 1960 and an MA in Philosophy from the University of Washington in 1963. Dennis then decided to pursue his interest in painting and received a Junior Fellowship from the School of the Fine Arts in Boston in 1968. In 1969, he taught at the Charles River Art Center in Massachusetts. In 1970, Dennis returned to the Northwest to teach at the Yakima Valley College Evening School. He settled in Port Townsend in 1975 where he would reside for 37 years until his passing.

Known as both a painter and printmaker, Dennis produced over 400 woodcuts during his 45 year career. Dennis was an invested member of the Northwest arts community and his art often depicted industrial scenes and natural landscapes drawn from his childhood in Portland and later years in the Puget Sound. He was also inspired by his domestic travels to California and Colorado and international trips to Africa and Japan. Dennis used bold graphics influenced by German Expressionism, Japanese woodblocks, comics and WPA industrial design, to collapse complicated scenes into charming, accessible images.


“I think a basic urge in art is to want to make one's experiences more permanent, less fleeting, less elusive, more clarified, identified. But art begins by replacing experience. And art itself is just as transient. It's like a parallel reality even in its ungraspability."

- Lockwood Dennis