Excerpt from "Don't Shed No Tears" - Chris Ashley, LookSee "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. Perhaps one approach an artist might take is sheer commitment. One might make painted images that are so highly crafted, detailed, and labor intensive, that so earnestly suggest every pore and thread, that the message is simply, "I believe, and I care. Look at this. It is important." To do this, the artist lives with images so intensely that they become familiar and internal, alive and emotional. Maybe the viewer picks up on this, and maybe it becomes part of the viewer's experience. Perhaps this is what Denis Peterson has done." Dust to Dust Acrylic on stretched canvas 40"x40" 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." Robert Ayers, ArtInfo “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." 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." Mary Birmingham, Art Curator “Loss of home is an unbearable consequence of diaspora. Denis Peterson's hyperrealist portrait of a homeless man is a stark reminder of humanity displaced." Brenda Blockman, WORTV 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." Chris Ashley, LookSee "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." Ari Siletz, A Brush Stroke for Every Human Suffering "Western artists such as David, da Vinci and Denis Peterson are important in part because of their skill and innovation, but also because they come from cultures that dominate the modern global power scene. Renaissance painters catered to emerging capitalism, the sons in David’s painting “Oath of the Horati” symbolize French colonies, and Peterson’s Darfur painting, “Don’t Shed No Tears” provokes America to intervene with her wealth." Rik Rawling, Keep it Hyper Real - WordPress "Somewhere during the process of painting Peterson imbued something of himself into the work, which is why his images for me succeed where his contemporaries do not. He doesn’t just paint street scenes, but for me these are his most effective images. Devoid of any human presence, his locations are ripe for ghosts, the atmosphere heavy with unassauged yearning."