Denise Stewart-Sanabria
Denise Stewart-Sanabria was born in Massachusetts and received her BFA in Painting from the University of Massachusetts/Amherst. She has lived in Knoxville, TN, since 1986.
Stewart-Sanabria paints hyper-realist epicurean dramas featuring everything from produce to subversive jelly donuts. The anthropomorphic narratives often reflect human behavior. She is also known for her life-size charcoal portrait drawings on plywood, which are cut out, mounted on wood bases, and staged in conceptual installations. In 2019, she received the Tennessee Arts Commission Individual Artist Grant for her work on wood.
Recent solo exhibits include "Virtual Reality" at the John P. Weatherhead Gallery, University of Saint Francis, Fort Wayne, IN; "Quantum Continuum" at the Rebecca Randall Bryan Gallery, Coastal Carolina University, Conway, SC; "Another Virtual Reality" at the New Harmony Gallery of Contemporary Art at the University of Southern Indiana; and "ENCOUNTERS: Denise Stewart-Sanabria" at the Huntsville Museum of Art, Huntsville, AL.
Her work is included in various museums, private, and corporate collections, including the Tennessee State Museum, the Evansville Museum of Art in Indiana, the Knoxville Museum of Art, the Huntsville Museum of Art, Notre Dame of Maryland University, FirstBank TN, Pinnacle Banks, Omni and Opryland Hotels, Knoxville Botanical Gardens, Jewelry Television, TriStar Energy, the Atlanta Branch of the Federal Reserve Bank/Nashville office, the Aslan Foundation, The Ayers Foundation, and the corporate offices of McGhee Tyson Airport.
Artist Statement
I anthropomorphize food in my culinary paintings. I juxtapose backgrounds that suggest idealized narratives based on toile and various wallpaper patterns from many centuries with cosmetically beautified and distressed produce and baked goods. I add ceramic tchotchkes, often animals, to enhance the drama. All of this occurs in dramatically lit stage settings intended to inspire multiple human appetites. The backdrops, food, and ceramics all come to us through the history of commercial design and culinary art. These are products of desire and culture that have been created for and chosen by people to enrich their everyday lives. I love to put them all together to see what happens.
In my paintings, I create anthropomorphized Epicurean dramas staged across time and cultures. Traumatized baked goods and produce interact with random commercial tchotchkes and props in staged interiors or edible landscapes. Backdrops are sourced from 400 years of wallpaper, fabric, painting, and graphic design. I wonder how Chattanooga Moon Pies would be received next to macarons at the Court of Versailles. What would a UFO want to beam up from this planet into their spaceship? How can I make ceramic animals eat the gastronomical display I’ve placed them in? I play with the staging until the objects themselves tell me exactly what they want to do.
www.stewart-sanabria.com
How has the environment you grew up in affected your art practice?
I grew up in Worcester County, MA, which has a fabulous art museum with collections from ancient Egypt through Asia to contemporary art. My family were members, and we never missed an exhibit. I took all the kids' classes! We also visited the Boston Museum of Art and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston frequently. I think I might have been indoctrinated!
If your artwork was a mirror, what would it reflect?
My art reflects my preoccupation with humor, history, and cultural analysis. People have always created amazing things to domestically surround themselves with, despite the constant threat of war and devastation by the primitive-minded apex predators of our species, whose alpha need is to dominate and control others. I want to know what the cooks, bakers, and gardeners were creating at Versailles. The staff were the creators; the monarchy were just troublesome parasites who didn't even know how to boil water.
What is the most difficult part (or your least favorite part) of your process?
Varnishing is like dealing with an unpredictable cat. It’s mostly nice, but you never know when areas of paint will reject the varnish because the surface is “too tight.” Which painting is going to give you trouble? Should you oil out every painting first? I’ve learned all the tricks to troubleshoot this, but varnishing is still stressful.
Pursuing ‘artist’ as a career is not for the faint of heart. What is the most rewarding aspect of this pursuit?
In the long run, being able to make a living from sales enables me to keep working. It keeps me from having to find a job at the local home improvement stores in the paint sales department.
If your art is in a lineage of artists working within similar veins, who would be part of your lineage and why?
Over the centuries, there have been artists doing strange things in what is generally called “still life” painting. I consider my work anthropomorphic culinary dramas, but they still fit that previous genre. Juan Sánchez Cotán (1560-1627) really connects with me, as does Hieronymus Bosch. Until the 20th and 21st centuries, however, few others resonated with me. The genre was too dogmatically predictable and confining.
