Denis Peterson

Denis Peterson



Denis Peterson learned drawing and painting under the lifelong tutelage of his grandfather, a master painter and protégé of Claude Monet. Denis restored 16th and 17th century Flemish paintings for museums attaining his BFA and MFA.

His early photorealist paintings were shown in New York at galleries and in public exhibitions including the Brooklyn Museum, one of the premier art institutions in the world. Following two decades of painting, the next two were a disconnect from exhibiting his work in order to pursue other interests. Then, breaking with the formal conventions of traditional painting and its aesthetic limitations, he pioneered a splinter movement within photorealism that he called hyperrealism, now a widely acknowledged school of art with a significant international following.

Hyperreal paintings by Denis Peterson are sought by art collectors worldwide and exhibited throughout the United States and Europe. Denis maintains a studio in New York.

"One demonstration of the way photography became assimilated into the art world is the success of photorealist painting in the late 60's and early 70's. It is also called super-realism or hyper-realism and painters like Richard Estes, Denis Peterson, Audrey Flack, and Chuck Close often worked from photographic stills to create paintings that appeared to be photographs."

Graham Thompson - American Culture, Edinburgh University Press (U.K.)

"This instance of hyperrealism is a performance art. Viewers are deliberately made to notice the amazing amount of time and painstaking effort that went into portraying this Darfur refugee. Peterson isn't showing off; he is a radical painter, compelling us with his dedication. The astonishing realism is the result of every wrinkle and twist of hair being colored and shadowed in the context of reflected light from every other object in the scene. Whereas the camera does this mindlessly as a matter of optics, this artist has endured whatever it took to make sure human eyes do not respond as mindlessly. We can flip the page on a Newsweek photo, worth a click of the camera, but we can’t as easily turn away from such an extraordinary labor of compassion."


Excerpt from "A Brush Stroke for Every Human Suffering" - Ari Siletz, Media Watch