Denise has always drawn, painted, written poetry and has a deep love of beautiful art and nature.
For many years Denise studied calligraphy and botanical art, exhibiting and attending many workshops, both in Australia and in the UK. On retiring, Denise decided to formalize and enhance her love of art, and went back to uni, completing a Diploma of Visual Art, major study in painting, and minor study in printmaking. Art history and sculpture were an area of great interest also.
Since completing her Diploma, she has diversified into other fields – making and designing jewellery, creating artist dolls, and more recently paper cutting as an art form.
Paper cutting is the creation of a picture using one complete piece of paper, utilizing negative and positive space to form the image. This is done using either very sharp scissors, or a scalpel. Denise prefers to use a surgical scalpel to create her artwork, changing the blade very many times during the creation of a piece. Some intricate pieces have taken 60 hours of painstaking cutting. One of Denise’s favourite papers to work with, is So Silk, made by the prestigious Groupo Cordenons in Italy, and incorporates real silk fibres, although it is not available in Australia, and Denise sources it from the UK. Denise also works with Tyvek, which is a very resilient but lightweight material, which can be dyed after cutting.
As the integrity of each piece needs to be maintained – i.e. each component of the picture needs to be connected to another area, so that the cut out pieces don’t simply drop out of the paper, the process needs to be planned precisely.
Denise’s love of flora and fauna is evident in the subject matter of a lot of her work, and she is appreciative of the abundance of natural beauty, which is to be found in the Macedon Ranges |
