Artist Denise Wellenstein's Profile

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Personal Information

• Name: Denise Wellenstein
• Gender: Female
• Location: GA, United States

Entries Written: 1 entries
Comments Written: 4 comments
Signup Date: March 25, 2008
Last Login: July 6, 2010

Statement
I rarely go to the canvas knowing what I want to paint. The colors lead me mostly. I improvise along the way.

Education
My first meaningful exposures to art happened at a summer drawing class when I was a teenager.
The class was drawing a group of peppers on a table in the center of the room. My lines were tentative and weak and did not represent the peppers at all. The instructor and I both new it was pretty bad. Whenever he looked at my drawing pad, he walked away shaking his head.
Before the end of the class, the instructorsaid to do it like this. He took my hand holding the charcoal and drew a line, an arc, a gestural movement that both visually and essentially represented the object in front of us. There was electricity in this mark. This mark was intentional, full of life and energy.

After graduating from high school in rural upstate New York, I earned a BA in Liberal Arts in 1993 at Goddard College in Vermont, with an emphasis on photography and psychology. Self portraits.

Later, I earned an MFA in Imaging Arts in 1997 at Rochester Institute of Technology. The MFA program emphsized Post-Modern art theory and the political in personal art. However, all of my work remained a personal expression of myself, usually in the form of video and installation.

After all this education in art and its many mediums (photography, painting, installation, performance, video, digital, drawing), I have returned to one of my very first loves: oil painting.

Biography
I have found my medium in oil paints. The vibrant color of the paints themselves draw me in, and the verstility of oils, the textures and consistancy, the smell, the sensuality of the medium engages me more than any other medium ever could.

My oil paintings range from gestural, expressive, and abstract to semi-realism and portraiture. I love faces. I love shapes. I love color

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