A Unique Perspective On Reality

Denise Ryan exhibits ‘surreal’ still lifes in Rogers

Denise Ryan’s still life paintings have been described as surreal and metaphysical. She’ll show her work Thursday at Art on the Creeks in Rogers.
Denise Ryan’s still life paintings have been described as surreal and metaphysical. She’ll show her work Thursday at Art on the Creeks in Rogers.

Denise Ryan works to create illusion in her hyper-real - or perhaps “surreal” or even “metaphysical” - still life paintings.

“I try to create something that is not quite possible in the physical world but becomes very possible within the format of a painting,” the Eureka Springs artist says. “I want to paint them so you can reach in and touch anything in there.”

Viewers will have a chance to see Ryan’s work Thursday as she joins some 50 artists - including fellow Eurekans Ken Addington and Zeek Taylor - at the Art on the Creeks festival at Village on the Creeks in Rogers. The juried exhibition will be accompanied by two performances by the Symphony of Northwest Arkansas Chamber Orchestra.

While Ryan has been commissioned to do many portraits and loves that work, a combination of still life and landscape painting has become her passion because “it gives me a lot of room for creativity.”

“The still life has always held a fascination for me because of the endless possibilities it presents for a creative mind and an active imagination,” she says.

And using landscape as a background allows her to create a space “that goes on forever.”

In her rebellion against the traditional concept of still life, Ryan also likes to add a bird or an insect or a frog to create a “not-so-still life.” Perhapssomeday one of her works will include a squirrel - when her heart heals over the loss of her longtime companion, Bullwinkle.

“When we brought him home, you couldn’t even tell he was a squirrel,” Ryan remembers, saying the tiny animal had no fur and its eyes were still closed. After feeding him around the clock, the squirrel grew up to be a family pet who slept in Ryan’s lap, knew everybody’s name and gave kisses. He died recentlyat 6 1 /2 years old.

“I’ll paint him as soon as I can,” she says.

Having a pet squirrel probably didn’t cross Ryan’s mind as a city girl growing up in Philadelphia, but art did at an early age. Her mother, Elizabeth Ryan, had always wanted to be an artist, and one of Ryan’s earliest memories is coming home to the smell of oil paint.

“She was a fabulous painter and sculptor,” Ryan remembers, describing how her mother worked in the dining room because having five children meant no studio space. Her father, John Ryan, was an aerospace engineer, she adds, but also artistic. “I have a lot of the drawings and paintings he did.”

The talent, honed by weekend visits to museums, continued among the children, with music, horticulture and acupuncture among the chosen career paths. At the age of 10, Denise began to accompany her mother to life drawing classes and, she explains on her website, also “tagged along” on many landscape painting expeditions. She later earned degrees from Temple University's Tyler School of Fine Arts and Yale University, taught at the Governor's School of the Arts at Trenton State College, Moore College of Art in Philadelphia and Stockton State College in Pomona, N.J.

Having already led her to her career, Ryan’s mother alsoled her daughter to Eureka Springs. The family’s roots go back to the building of the Crescent Hotel, and her mother designed the stained glass at St. Elizabeth Catholic Church.

“There has always been somebody living here who was my relative,” Ryan says, “and it’s been a family vacation destination for years. After my father died, my mother wanted to move here, and I came with her to help her find a house.”

What Ryan found was a home.

“It’s beautiful and historic, and people are so warm,” she says. “I didn’t even know it was an arts destination until after I moved here. But there’s something here that draws artists.”

Whats Up, Pages 12 on 08/17/2012

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