Artist Statement

Denise Verret was born December 13, 1957, in Lake Charles, Louisiana. In 1980, she
earned her undergraduate degree in art at McNeese State University in Lake Charles.
Afterward, she received her MFA in painting with a minor in printmaking at the
University of North Texas in Denton and soon began teaching as an assistant at UNT. In
her first year, she was offered a part-time teaching position at Mountain View College 

in Dallas, where she taught painting, drawing, and watercolor. 

 

While holding down a day job as a concierge at the Marriott in Dallas and part-time jobs
teaching art to children and the elderly, she continued teaching night classes at
Mountain View for 12 years. Moving on from being a concierge, she started working for
Half Price Books in Dallas, Texas, which led to her becoming a bookseller there for The
Texas Bookman followed by Powell’s Books Wholesale in Chicago. Both these jobs took
her traveling across the country as well as overseas to Frankfurt, London, Amsterdam,
Wales, and Ireland with the added benefit of museum-hopping in her spare time
working at book fairs.

 

She currently concentrates on acrylic painting, mixed media drawing, and monotypes
that incorporate a kind of detailed “automatism” - an adding and subtracting approach
quite liberating in degrees of spontaneity. Pattern, line, and texture are recurring
elements in her work. Dadaism, some Surrealism, various other schools of art, and even
some Medieval and Renaissance painters’ odd approaches to subject 

matter appeal to her. 

 

The shapes and colors, the lines and dots, the marks and patterns in her artwork come
from a plane of creativity isolated from the ordinary. There is an apparent observation
of landscape, sky, water, fire, figures, and structures that infiltrate each work. Where
the boxes, circles, bowls, and mazes she feels inclined to draw and paint come from,
remain an enigma to her. How they end up appearing visually is a result of the quest the
artist makes to express herself convincingly to the viewer.