In part one of a two-part essay, Lita Barrie writes about the paintings of Dennis Hollingsworth. Hollingsworth's work is on view in Drifter, a group exhibition at Hionas Gallery, New York through January 11, 2014.

Barrie writes: "Dennis Hollingsworth’s paintings raise playful questions about the paradoxical position of abstract painting today – caught in the impasse between opposing camps. While Hollingsworth is highly skeptical about the conventions that inscribe painting, he also recognizes the impossibility of working without them. He uses this paradox as the impetus for his work – turning the painterly process into a critical reflection upon itself, that constantly raises new questions about its own modus operandi… Hollingsworth’s layered surfaces become a self-reflective space in which questions do not admit the closure of an answer – endings become beginnings, outer turns into inner and viewers are left to make of it what they can."