Alice Denison

Alice Denison's paintings, baroque and lush are filled with flowers, but to call them simply flower paintings does them a disservice. Of the work Denison says; “In these paintings, I am treading a line between decoration and abstraction, pushing a floral motif past its domestic roots into an exploration of comfort, nostalgia and the ephemeral.

Denison studied painting as an undergraudate at Mount Holyoke thirty years ago. After pursuing a career in the not-for-profit world, she returned actively to the studio ten years ago. Since then she has had solo shows in Boston, Provincetown, and Greenport, NY. Of her work, Mary Sherman, critic for the Boston Herald has called Denison’s “lush views of nature so close up as to be abstract.” James Fortino, writing in Artscope noted that “she paints flowers that seem to be as much blooms of the psyche as of earth, as much symbol as representation.”

Of her work Denison says: Some time ago, I was struck by a statement by the late painter Robert Dash. He said, “Make yourself cry”. Dash’s statement got me, not so much because of its implication that you should feel deeply about your work, but because it suggested there was a way to work from sentiment which meant it was possible nostalgia could be a subject for serious work. My work is concerned with how we manage to live along the rim of dying, and nostalgia and comfort play a role in our ability to do that.

The works vary in size from “Drink” a 10”x10” canvas to larger scale works such as “Tarentella,” 54”x50”. The palates are rich, subdued, with the occasional exuberant shout of color.