DENISE PETERSEN » Portfolio of Works

This is a partial collection of my animal portraits. If you are interested in commissioning a portrait of your favorite animal companion(s), please see the "Commissioning a portrait" page and contact me for details. 

Inevitable Outcome is the first in my new series where I pay homage to some once beautiful creatures, now beautiful taxidermies.

This series of paintings imagine taxidermied animals adjusting to their second lives as decor. Once wild and alive, they now inhabit domestic spaces—quietly observing, enduring, and adapting to their strange new roles as objects of display, memory, and ornament.

I'm currently working on the next four in the series.

In this series, I examine the inevitable toll usage and time take on us all. Whether through depicting a pair of shoes via still life or a portrait study of a contemporary, I want to find the character and beauty in things aging, weathered and worn.