Denise Carletta

Hi, I'm Denise, the one holding the paintbrush, the pencils, and the sculpting tools.

I’m a '60s baby, one of six kids in a large, loud New York family with energy that mirrored the city’s. In our house, at least two people were always talking at once, often while sirens blared and car horns honked. That’s likely why I gravitated toward painting—I could express myself without competition.

For eons, humans have used painting to share what they see and what it means for them to be alive at that moment. While studying in Greece and Italy, I was inspired by the imagery of ancient artists to create legends and myths of my own.

My art is steeped in the tradition of contemporary figurative drawing and sculpture. I use a combination of mediums—pencil, charcoal, paint, wood, clay, and resin—to create layers. Through this stratum of mark-making, personas emerge in a captured moment.

Layers of dark and light create who we are. Layers of dark and light create my work. The physical, external process of putting pencil to paper, brush to panel, portrays and mirrors my internal experience of life, a kind of geography of the soul.

Like life, it’s my hope the viewer’s perception of my work shifts with each viewing and changes as they change, adding and subtracting from the story.

Above all, it’s this exchange—the interpretive process of sharing—I hold the highest. Without it, there is no art; there is nothing to be said or heard.