Denise Mortensen

I did not create art for forty years. Then, in my fifties, I picked up a paintbrush again, and my journey as a painter began.

During those four decades, my creative energy went into raising my five children, publishing four children's books, teaching, and working as an editor and administrative assistant. I grew up in a suburb of New York City, the third of seven children, in a lively household that welcomed people, animals, and children alike—it was there that I first discovered my love of drawing and painting.

Art was my favorite subject in high school, but I went on to study journalism in college and later worked in New York City at CBS News and Condé Nast Publications. I married my high school sweetheart, and this thing called life happened: kids, careers, and two long-distance moves. In 2018, with a quiet house and space to return to myself, I picked up where I had left off decades earlier—first with graphite portraits and watercolors, then moving into acrylics and mixed media.

Over the past several years, I have immersed myself in art theory and practice, completing the twelve-week ART2Life program, Jane Burton's Fearless Abstraction, and numerous other workshops. My work is influenced by Helen Frankenthaler, Willem de Koo...

B.A., Journalism, St. Bonaventure University

Group Exhibitions:
2019 Artists on the Bluff Exhibition, Lake Forest, IL/The Gallery
2024 Shape & Form, Sturt Haaga Gallery, Flintridge, CA
(Jurors: Meher McArthur, art historian and curator,
Los Angeles, CA; and Mollie White, Gallerist,
Mollie White Gallery, Los Angeles, CA)
2024 Far & Wide, Woodstock Artists & Art Museum, Woodstock, NY
(Juror: Jane Eckert, Founding Director of Eckert Fine Art, Washington Depot, CT)
2024 Call Me When You Get Over the Bridge, Cultural Center of Cape Cod, Cape Cod, MA
2024 Northern National Art Exhibition, Nicolet College Art Gallery, Rhinelander, WI
(Juror: Debra Brehmer, owner/director Portrait Society Gallery, Milwaukee, WI)
2024 Fall Exhibition, Art League of the Chathams, Chatham, NJ
2024 Art League of Rhode Island, jurors, Joshua Cullion and Adria Polletta