Dan Connally
American, 1956-

A Small Fire, 2004
oil on wood panel
41 x 43 ¼ x 1 ¼ in.

SBMA, Museum Purchase
2012.43

" I sometimes achieve something like reverie in the studio and notions flow in and out of my head unbidden and unedited."
- Dan Connally

COMMENTS

Dan Connally’s abstract paintings are familiar and inviting in their rich, color-saturated forms but are complex enough to resist any one-dimensional interpretation. Connally describes the process of making "A Small Fire" and the significance of its title as follows:

“In my case I sometimes achieve something like reverie in the studio and notions flow in and out of my head unbidden and unedited. At some point in the very long making of this picture I think I saw the awkward dark maw as a fireplace and the business at the bottom as logs. It was not my intention to depict such a thing, but it is important for me to clue any sympathetic viewer to my desire to make pictures and not just paintings, so I settled on A Small Fire as a nod toward something ordinary and mysterious, restless and fascinating, gaze-sustaining and pleasure-giving.”

Since 1989, Connally has served as a lecturer in the College of Creative Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He has exhibited in several group exhibitions at SBMA since the late 1980s. Most recently, he was featured in the 2009 exhibition California Calling: Works from Santa Barbara Collections, 1948-2008. "A Small Fire" now belongs to the Museum’s ever-expanding collection of contemporary California art.

- SBMA New Acquisition, 2012