Graham Thompson, "American Culture in the Twentieth Century"
"One demonstration of the way photography became assimilated into the art world is the success of photorealist painting in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It is also called super-realism or hyper-realism and painters like Richard Estes, Denis Peterson, Audrey Flack, and Chuck Close often worked from photographic stills to create paintings that appeared to be photographs."

Fergal Keane, BBC
“To witness genocide is to feel not only the chill of your own mortality, but the degradation of all humanity. Even the most brilliant photography cannot capture the landscape of genocide."

Ari Siletz, Commentaries
"This instance of hyperrealism is a performance art. Viewers are deliberately made to notice the amazing amount of time and painstaking effort that went into portraying this Darfur refugee. Peterson isn't showing off; he is a radical painter, compelling us with his dedication. The astonishing realism is the result of every wrinkle and twist of hair being colored and shadowed in the context of reflected light from every other object in the scene.

Whereas the camera does this mindlessly as a matter of optics, the artist has endured whatever it took to make sure human eyes do not respond as mindlessly. We can flip the page on a Newsweek photo, worth a click of the camera, but we can’t as easily turn away from such an extraordinary labor of compassion."

Brenda Blockman, FOX TV Real Time Interview
"This is an artist who has chosen to use his art as a humanitarian effort to change the world, as seen in his stunning Darfur paintings on genocide."

Mary Birmingham, Jersey Journal
“Loss of home is an unbearable consequence of diaspora. Denis Peterson's hyperrealist portrait of a homeless man in "Dust to Dust" is a stark reminder of humanity displaced."

Chris Rywalt, NYC Art
"Maybe we need people who can remind us what being human is all about, its best and its worst. Denis Peterson may not want to be one of those people. But then he may not have a choice."

Chris Ashley, Look See
"How a painting is conceived, how it is made, how it exists as a painting, and how it engages a viewer in a complex experience of looking, discovery, and psychological and emotional dynamics is the territory where a painted image becomes something much more than a picture of something. And by making something beautiful and hyper-real in appearance, I think he attempts to remind us that people suffering terribly are living, breathing, thinking, and feeling individuals in need of our attention and help."

Robert Ayers, Art Info
“What makes it all the more unnerving is that this horrific subject matter is treated with a sophisticated, hyperrealist airbrush technique and so exquisitely crafted that I initially took them for photographs."