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".
You might have noticed the recorded videos in recent blog posts showing portions of these three paintings in progress. Here they are finished, fresh off of the easel. All three are 14"x14" on portrait canvas.
The Hereford is another view of Ranger, a recently sold portrait. He is so cute! The Black Baldy painting is a portrait of one of his friends, they both lived on the same property, and were show cattle.
The little Texas Longhorn calf portrait is the second in a series of portraits, the first one is sold. I have one more view that I did as a study (sold) that I will likely paint in the future.