Denise, tell us about your training and development as an artist.

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It seems like I have always been drawing, but it was a comment by my daughter – “you’re always happy when you’re painting mummy” - that encouraged me to enrol in evening art classes. I followed a programme over several years that included art disciplines such as drawing from observation, life drawing and oil painting. A few years later, again with encouragement from my daughter, I enrolled on a degree course at Northbrook College in Worthing and achieved a BA(Hons) in Fine Art in 2015.

 

Seascapes, landscapes, skyscapes and flowers fill your canvases. What is it about subjects from nature which inspires you?

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My sketchbooks are filled with drawings of the life I see around me. But I live in an area where I am lucky enough to be close to the Sussex Downs and the sea so my art was always going to be about nature. I love to paint from life, recently I’ve enjoyed painting in gardens, not individual flowers, but sitting on the ground soaking up the atmosphere and painting what I see.

 

There is often a stillness about your work. How much of that comes from you and how much from the subject?

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If I have achieved a tangible stillness in my work then I am very happy.  Our world can seem a very stressful place and there are times when we need somewhere peaceful to go and I like to find that place. So to answer the question, stillness comes in equal parts from myself and from the subjects I choose to paint.

 

When I reviewed one of your paintings I wrote: 

"[Denise] presents us ... with that sense of being with the roses rather than simply observing them."

How would you describe what you want to achieve through your work?

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I don’t try to paint a perfect image of what I see so in a sense I am trying to show the viewer what I observe and feel while I am painting. When someone is touched by one of my paintings it is the most amazing feeling. 

 

Why do you paint?

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Because I can’t stop.

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Thankyou Denise.