"If one accepts the argument
that art's highest calling is to tell us something about the time and
place in which we live, Denney stands out as one of the more important
painters working in Oregon."
Randy Gragg
The Oregonian
May 29, 1994
"..I had heard
that this show would be adding the additional freight of message - make
that, Message - to Neo-Expressionism's already burdensome freight of
emotionalism; in this case, some slam-bang propaganda for the West's
fast-vanishing old-growth forests. I could not have pre-judged a finer
exhibition. Had I missed it - I went back twice - I would today feel
honor-bound to turn in my typewriter and press pass."
"His work is
to landscape painting what cyberpunk is to literature, a 'Blade Runner'
vision of the decline of the Northwest."
"Denney
describes the paintings as 'bleak but hopeful.' What he means is this:
The raw subject of the landscapes is man's fall from the balanced
harmony of the first Garden, but the vision that urges these images on
us includes the possibility--however slight and fraught with peril--of
redemption."
An Archaeologist of Trees
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