Work samples
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"Within Us"This piece serves as an emotional transcription, encoding the various directions life pulls us. Like roots and shoots responding to their environment, we too are shaped by forces both within and beyond our control. Through this visual meditation, I reflect on how relationships, loss, and death are inevitable passages in our journey – some aspects we can influence, others we must simply experience as part of life's greater cycle.
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"Within Me"Mixed media: ink, acrylic on paper
Created from a position of physical constraint painted while lying prone. This work transforms medical X-ray imagery into a meditation on resilience. Translucent wavelengths in varying shades of blue intersect with the vertebral column, mapping the tension between bodily limitation and mental fortitude. The blue palette signals perseverance; the spine becomes both evidence of injury and symbol of strength. Here, internal pain finds external expression through gestural marks that refuse stillness, embodying a refusal to be defined by physical trauma alone.
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"Protector"In this deeply personal meditation on time and connection, delicate linework charts the invisible bonds between past, present, and future. At its heart, the piece explores the enduring presence of paternal guidance – how my father's wisdom continues to resonate long after spoken words have faded into memory.
The central motif, a heart emanating telepathic waves both inward and outward, serves as a metaphor for the transcendent nature a profound relationship. These radiating lines speak to moments of shared awakening and understanding, while simultaneously marking the passage of time and its sacred importance in our lives.
Through precisely rendered passages that seem to grow and evolve across the composition, I am mapping a continuing journey of personal growth. Each stroke becomes a transcription of inherited wisdom, transformed through artistic expression into a visual testament to the protective power of enduring love.
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"Dreaming of a world"Oil on canvas, 72" × 36"
This portrait confronts the viewer with a question: What do you see first? For young men of color, first impressions often carry the weight of societal assumptions that must be actively dismantled. The figure at the center, a scholar, an athlete, a student of debate with aspirations toward law and finance and embodies multiplicity that defies reductive narratives.
The vibrant yellow background serves dual purposes: it radiates optimism and warmth, framing this young man in the glow of possibility, while simultaneously invoking caution. A visual warning against the premature judgments that too often greet Black youth. His stoic expression and folded hands signal contemplation, revealing a thinker in formation, a future leader navigating the space between strength and vulnerability. He is both grounded in the present and reaching toward a world where his full humanity is recognized without hesitation.
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About Denese
Denese King-Ashley's artistic practice navigates seamlessly between monumental portraiture and intricate botanical metamorphosis, each piece revealing her masterful command of multiple mediums. In her recent large-scale portraits, she elevates familial subjects to near-mythological status. Working primarily in oil, graphite and pen, she captures the commanding presence of her subjects – a matriarch's quiet authority, a child's moment of contemplation, a mix of metaphoric… more
"Hello Beautiful"
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"Hello Beautiful"In this striking portrait , a young woman sits centered against a bold red background, her form anchored by the flowing waves of her blue skirt. The subject is captured in profile, her downward gaze suggesting a moment of deep contemplation. Her bare head, a testament to her ongoing battle with breast cancer, becomes not a symbol of loss but one of profound courage.. While the aggressive red backdrop might typically signal danger or alarm, here it serves to amplify her presence. A testament to her unwavering spirit in the face of adversity.
"Within Us"
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"Within Us"This piece serves as an emotional transcription, encoding the various directions life pulls us. Like roots and shoots responding to their environment, we too are shaped by forces both within and beyond our control. Through this visual meditation, I reflect on how relationships, loss, and death are inevitable passages in our journey – some aspects we can influence, others we must simply experience as part of life's greater cycle.
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"Within Us"
"Dreaming Of A World"
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"Dreaming Of A World"Painting is done on canvas and measures 36" x 72" The composition is of a black male figure positioned centrally on the canvas. A bright yellow background, which symbolize hope, optimism, or illumination. The subject's gaze is directed outward beyond the frame. The pose representing aspiration and determination. The background creating a sense of brightness and possibility. The composition suggesting both presence and potential.
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"Crossroads"
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"Crossroads"Mixed media: colored pencil, oil, paint pens
A young man stands at an intersection, both literal and metaphorical, confronting his first encounter with mistaken identity. The stop sign becomes a canvas for graffiti, a visual evidence of internal questions that surface when society reduces a person to a description based on skin color and appearance. In response, he chooses silence as protest, donning a mask that withholds his voice while making his resistance visible.
The composition's darkness speaks to this imposed silence, while the bold red demands attention, a warning, a declaration of danger inherent in snap judgments. The graffiti layered across the sign externalizes what is typically kept internal: the pain, confusion, and interrogation that follow being seen as a threat rather than a person. Here, the mask becomes both shield and statement, a refusal to perform legibility for a society that has already decided what it sees.
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"Bottled in"
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"Bottled In"Pen and ink on paper< 40"X 26
This work emerged intuitively, line by line, allowing the pen to discover its own boundaries. Within the contained shape, forms oscillate between decay and vitality, some thriving, others decomposing, all caught mid-transformation. They reach and attach to one another as they travel through the composition, their movement perpetually stopping short of escape.
Each misstep in the drawing process becomes generative, spawning new extensions that hint at possible routes out, though none offer certainty. The accumulated forms operate as an embodiment of emotion that is layered, collapsed, contained but yet they produce moments of wonder through their unexpected configurations. These visual experiences multiply as the piece develops: lines refuse harmony, instead flowing into improvised connections that allow the larger form to expand organically.
What appears trapped also continues to grow, suggesting that constraint itself can be a condition for transformatio
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