Best known for her bovine renditions, with unique compositions and contemporary views, Denise has combined her love of animals and art in oil for the past 20 years.
Denise's focus for the past several years has been cows because "Cows make me smile. I seriously can't look at one and hold back a smile. I don't just see an animal, I see a personality, and that is what I am working to present in my paintings of cows." In 2006 Denise received a commission from the California Milk Advisory Board to paint their famous Happy Cows of the Real California Milk campaign. This led to becoming "The Official Happy Cow Artist", as seen on their website.
Her creative process begins with field work, taking reference photos. Cows being a favorite subject means "field work" can be taken literally, and involves careful stepping!
With a signature "painterly realism" style Denise breathes life
into her subjects, often bringing viewer comments of how "you could just reach out and touch them" and "I expect them to mooo".
A common practice with artists is to do preliminary drawings and sketches for planning an oil painting. Sometimes several similar views are done to enable chosing the best one to paint.
I have generally only offered oil paintings for purchase, but I am going to start listing for sale some studies, charcoal and graphite of the Happy Cow paintings, as well as others. I think they would make great gifts for any Holstein fan, especially if they love the Happy Cows. This is one of my favorites of the Happy Cows: You may recognize it as California Is The Place To Be. This is graphite on Arches 90 lb hot press watercolor paper, a surface I am especially fond of drawing on. This is about 5.5"x7".
I love the value studies, hope you will too. I'll be posting more as I have time, but commissions are calling!
