Background
Denis Peterson was born in 1944, in New York, United States.
Pratt Institute
Denis Peterson was born in 1944, in New York, United States.
Denis Peterson learned drawing and painting under the lifelong tutelage of his grandfather, a master painter and protégé of Claude Monet. Denis earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts while restoring 16th and 17th-century Flemish paintings for museums and worked as a graphics illustrator. Denis Peterson earned a Painting Master of Fine Arts and teaching fellowship at Pratt Institute.
Among the first Photorealists to emerge in New York, Denis' photorealist paintings were exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum, one of the premier art institutions in the world. His more recent hyperrealist works have shown at major museums and galleries throughout the United States and Europe.
Many of Denis Peterson's groundbreaking paintings can be found among some of the most notable art collections worldwide. He is widely recognized as the primary architect of Hyperrealism, a splinter movement from the more traditional painting genre of Photorealism which systemically idealized and fetishized icons of contemporary culture in a detached and at times, banal framework.
Abandoning traditional conventions, Peterson illuminated commodification of alternate realities found within that same contemporary culture: mass consumerism, systemic classism, and societal decadence. He portrays anonymous ordinary people caught up in contemporary conflicts, neither glorifying nor heroizing them. They are simply deserving of having their likeness recorded as any famous person, and more importantly, of having their humanity recognized.
A radical painter, Peterson's compelling virtuosity addresses the timeless human condition with precision and dignity. Denis Peterson's socially conscious paintings are the products of an extraordinary labor of compassion. A native New York artist, Denis paints fulltime in his studio, producing work in thematic series. His exquisite paintings are actively sought by prominent collectors and renowned art patrons worldwide.
Denis Peterson adheres to the artistic traditions of Photorealism (Super-Realism and Hyper-Realism).
Quotations: "Hyperrealism is an optically convincing, altered reality that challenges the verisimilitude of perception and illusion. As a counterculture school of painting, hyperrealism incorporates an existential frame of reference: in my new work, it is POP culture. It is no longer enough to just secure the painting as a realist object. I now utilize idiosyncratic anomalies in the digital reference photos that I shoot, i.e., multiple depths of field, expanded color range, low-resolution images, broken fractals, etc. Since the human eye does not ordinarily distinguish these somewhat inchoate mutations, I freely assimilate them into my work."
Denis Peterson is the associate member of College Art Association and American Federation of Arts.
Quotes from others about the person
In Peterson's paintings, people are present but are typically caught under the weight and pressure of billboards and advertisements that loom heavily over the streets they inhabit. For Peterson, this is a commentary on contemporary society and its effects on people.