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 new series is in progress to add to my Bovine art adventures. I've been gathering some interesting information about the American Bison, and have decided that it is most deserving of being center stage for a while. I have dabbled a bit, with a couple of pieces, one being the portrait that was accepted into the Bosque Art Classic seen in a previous post. I like the look of the charcoal, and will be doing more, such as this new piece. From several hundred reference photos I have taken this is one of the first pieces finished, a portrait, charcoal on canvas. This has been specially treated and sealed so it does not need to be under glass, and can be framed in a traditional canvas frame, a feature I especially like, The charcoal on canvas, to me, has a completely different look and depth than charcoal on paper. 30"x40"
Although it is charcoal, I wouldn't so much call it a drawing, as when I work with charcoal in this way I actually would describe it more as painting with the charcoal, similar to how pastels are called "pastel paintings".
I like this so much I might like to do it as an oil painting as well.
