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BIOGRAPHY
Denis Peterson learned art at an early age from his grandfather, a protégé of Claude Monet. While living in Marseilles, he became a prominent atelier painter whose highly realistic figurative paintings and frescos were strongly influenced by William Bouguereau, Jean-Léon Gérôme, and Jules Breton. Throughout the years, Denis' grandfather patiently taught him the secrets of the masters which he had learned from them. He was later known as a
consummate restorer of many significant portrait and figurative paintings by Rembrandt van Rijn in the NY Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Eventually, Denis Peterson acquired a BFA and an MFA in painting at Pratt Institute, where he was awarded a prestigious teaching fellowship. He exhibited early soft focus photorealist paintings in colleges, galleries and once at the Brooklyn Museum. Denis Peterson worked as a fulltime commercial artist while maintaining his painting studio.
He later retired his artwork for eighteen years but recently returned to painting fulltime, further developing his unique soft focus realism style. Concentrating on visceral lighting effects and illusional depths of field, he has developed his work into a new style of painting that he redefined as hyperrealism - now a growing school of art in the US, Europe and Far East.
Peterson’s work has focused on diasporas, genocides and refugees around the globe by utilizing hyperrealism as a vehicle for political challenge through visually disturbing images that represent both a moment in time and a human condition. The work has exposed totalitarian regimes and raised political and moral conflicts with third world military governments through hyperreal depictions of the legacy of hatred and intolerance. Subjects of this iconoclastic artist are statuesque figures and stoic faces that eerily seem to share an internalized calm in the face of the surrounding horrors of deadly disease, impending torture, terrorizing fear and irrational hatred.
Three recent NYC gallery showings and enthusiastic media coverage have marked the return of his provocative and compelling works.
Denis Peterson has been acclaimed by artists and art critics who appreciate his hyperealist style of painting.