Alice Denison paints floral blossoms as if they were the only subject in the world and, accordingly, she imbues their depictions with the psychological weight and emotional space of portraiture. These are not, however, still lives because they are very much not still. Her blossoms cascade and cluster in roiling painterly space; experiencing the crisscrossing gravities is part of the fun. Another is watching Denison minimize her use of the illusionistic devices that persuade us an image is really there, paring her rendering until the illusion is on the brink of collapse.

Denison studied painting as an undergraduate thirty years ago, pursued other directions, and has returned to the studio with devotion in the past ten years. Her most recent work was spurred by a 2007 MFA program of the Massachusetts College of Art conducted at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown.

Writing in the Boston Herald, Mary Sherman noted Denison’s “lush views of nature so close up as to be nearly abstract,” and James Foritano, in Artscope Magazine, wrote “She paints flowers that seem to be as much blooms of the psyche as of earth, as much symbol as representation.”

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