Denise Townsend

Denise Susanne Townsend is an interdisciplinary artist who began her formal education in the arts in Florence, Italy while immersed in the power of the region’s presence: the river Arno, Tuscan hillsides, and a language that carries itself like song. Inspired by mezzo-frescos of the Italian Renaissance both in their magnitude and beauty, Townsend apprenticed to the craft during her graduate studies there and later began exploring a combination of enigmatic painting materials mimicking the texture and ethos of those ancient frescoed walls.

Upon completion of her graduate studies at the San Francisco Art Institute, Townsend resumed her international travels inquisitively venturing to live and work abroad. Receiving much inspiration from encounters with exquisite places and people from around the globe, she returned to the Bay Area after an eighteen month sojourn in the Middle East immersing herself in the landscape of Lucid Art Foundation’s Bishop Pine Preserve. Surrounded by forest creatures, silence and time unbound, Townsend continued to refine and synthesize her artistic vision incorporating natural materials in handcrafted paints made of earth minerals, plant medicines, ash, and stone.

Townsend’s work has been exhibited in solo and group shows in the United States, Europe, and South America and resides in private collections at home and abroad. The agency of her art is deeply influenced by the multitude of reverberations of our collective clarion call, carrying us swiftly into a world where art is not only poetry but also metaphor, medicine and muse.