Denise Ryan was born and raised in the Delaware Valley of Pennsylvania.
She is the oldest of five children of John and Elizabeth Ryan.
Her father was an aerospace engineer, a fine carpenter and draftsman.
Her mother was,an accomplished painter. Both parents instilled
in her a deep love of art from an early age and the family enjoyed
many trips to the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
As a child, she learned much from hours of observing her mother
paint and draw. At the age of ten Denise began to accompany her mother
to life drawing classes at the Fleischer Art Memorial in Philadelphia and also tagged along on many landscape painting expeditions. Later she
earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts from Temple University's Tyler
School of Fine Arts. She earned her Master of Fine Arts from Yale University.
She now resides with her husband in Eureka Springs,
Arkansas in the beautiful Ozark mountains where her mother's history
dates back to the 1880's. She paints daily in her studio
with a fine view of the wooded valley behind it. Denise also teaches
art classes at the Holiday Island Art Guild.
Her past teaching experiences have included the Governor's School
of the Arts at Trenton State College, where she was both an instructor
and Assistant Director. She was an Assistant Professor at both Moore College of Art in Philadelphia
and at Stockton State College in Pomona, New Jersey where she taught drawing, design and painting.
In her painting career Denise has been commissioned to do many
portraits and has developed a reputation for fine portraiture.
She is also known for her unusual still life/landscape compositions.
She has received many awards in various shows around the country
and her
work is included in many private and corporate collections.
Denise works primarily in oil and pastel. Stylistically the paintings are representational. Although they appear to be highly illusionistic,, the unusual combination of subjective elements, magical settings, brilliant colors and pervasive light quality create a sense of the surreal or metaphysical. The question of solving these pictorial mysteries is left to the viewer.
Ion Art interview (pdf)
