Dennis Ryan

Conceptual artist Dennis Ryan — OCD art

This series of 6 paintings was created directly after the phobia art series. Coming off of the 7 paintings of phobia studies Dennis really wanted to focus more on simplicity. He wanted this series to suggest beauty by line in motion and less by mental disturbance suggested by imagery. It is called the OCD art series because obsessive compulsive disorder is the main theme of the fine art; but not the only theme... anxiety concepts are also prevalent. On the surface, Ryan wanted to approach creating these paintings as pieces of beauty by using line to create form. He wanted the viewer to experience the flow and aesthetics of the art, and not just the concepts. Carried forward are some of the attributes he found successful in his previous paintings: like broad areas of solid color, mixing and juxtaposing mediums, and the use of household cleaning chemicals to inflict surface wear.

This mainstay of this OCD Series is the hands. The importance of hands, not only for the obsessive hand washing component of OCD, but on a bigger scale, is that hands are the way we all connect and most intimately interact with the world around us.

I found this artist who produces paintings expressing certain elements of OCD, what struck my attention was the use of bright primary colours, dabs of paint, layering and splodges as it resembled the work I'd researched previous to this which was focused around microscope photography. The one thing I'm not keen on with this work is the obviousness of what is being presented after knowing the work is about OCD, however I do appreciate the idea and techniques used and will experiment with similar things for myself.