The Society of Animal Artists Award of Excellence winner’s list reads like a who’s who of wildlife art: Robert Bateman, Carl Brenders, Simon Combes, Bob Kuhn, Daniel Smith and more. Andrew Denman not only received the Award of Excellence for the painting Twist in 2009, but for other works in 2003 and 2004 as well.
Andrew was chosen by the SAA in 2006 for the Don Eckelberry Memorial Scholarship. The resulting ten day trip to the Caribbean island of Trinidad and the Asa Wright Nature Center led to the creation of Twist. “While these Palm Tanagers were not remotely the most colorful birds I encountered in island’s lush tropical setting, they were among the most memorable” recalls Denman. “Although a ubiquitous sight, they had developed a completely fearless attitude and were frequent visitors, not only hanging from the vines immediately outside the terrace of the main building, but in the main house as well. They proved themselves to be shameless scavengers, cheekily entering the dining room to pillage unclaimed crumbs. I even saw nests indoors, including one amazingly nestled behind a refrigerator.
“From a design point of view, my interest lay in the beautiful play of curvilinear shapes and lines and the boldly abstract negative shapes they create. The addition of the swirling typeface emphasizes this concept while underscoring the graceful movement of the Palm Tanagers.”
This award winning work of art superbly presents the elements of style that have become Denman’s calling card: hyper-realism, stylization and abstraction. The Fine Art Edition Giclée canvas is 18" x 22" in an edition of only 75 and presented gallery wrapped for the option of contemporary frameless display. If ever beauty and cutting-edge could be used in the same description of a single work of art, it is with Andrew Denman’s Twist.

Ivory came about as the result of a rather complex commission which required, among other things, detailed reference material of doves in flight.  I was eventually able to track down a man who had a flock of white racing homing pigeons (close enough to doves) and spent an afternoon sitting in their flight path and snapping pictures as they circled his yard above the dovecote. 
While I was able to capture some impressive poses, my pictures lacked the detail I needed, so I spent a good while studying the birds’ wings up close.  These very docile creatures posed beautifully for me, and I was so taken by the micro view of their porcelain-like feathers that Ivory was born. 
In this painting, I sought to capture the kind of delicacy I’d often admired in white marble statues, where chiseled solidity and ephemeral translucence combine in elegant balance.  As I worked, the word “ivory” kept entering my head, and it eventually became not only the title of the painting, but incorporated into the image itself.

“Who doesn’t love monkeys?” asks artist Andrew Denman. “This little fellow captured my heart one day on a trip to the San Francisco Zoo. Anyone who has ever named a pet is guilty of anthropomorphization and in some wildlife paintings, such sentiment creeps subconsciously into the artist’s portrayal of the anatomy. My goal is to not let my feelings of identification with an animal subject distort the accuracy of my representation, but, I’m not at all above allowing emotion to shine through in the pose or expression I select or the title of the piece. “In this case, the squirrel monkey’s expression was so plaintive that I began to imagine a whole mythology surrounding him. For reasons I’ll never understand, his name became Winkie and I pictured him in a little bellhop uniform, separated from his old organ grinder, wandering dark city streets awash in neon, casting his eyes to the heavens, searching for a place to belong. We find him here, perhaps lit by the first warm rays of the morning sun, eager for the hopefulness of a new day.”
Keep Searching, Winkie will be delivered as a beautiful Gallery Wrap canvas, suitable for display with or without framing.

“Sometimes all signs point to the need to paint a certain painting and that was certainly the case with Primary,” relates Andrew Denman. “A local gallery owner called to let me know of the unfortunate demise of a beautiful red-breasted sapsucker and offered me the chance to collect the bird. I wanted to honor the bird and this dramatic trompe l’oeil treatment, the primary colors and the symmetrical composition, lend the piece the iconic feel I’d envisioned. One gets the sense of this beautiful woodpecker rising again.
“I had already laid my model to rest when I realized that the composition would not be complete without the fallen feather in the lower part of the picture. I was kicking myself for not having kept a few of the sapsucker’s feathers when I remembered that my grandmother had given me an envelope of feathers she’d collected from her property a week earlier that I had not yet opened. Sure enough, among them was the feather I needed! Although the red-breasted sapsucker is not a rare bird, I had not seen one in the more than twenty years I’d lived in the San Francisco Bay Area and my grandmother had randomly found just the feather I needed at precisely this time. It’s extraordinary. To add to the magic, I was taking a walk not two blocks from my house a week after I finished this painting when one of these splendid birds flew right across my path. It felt as though nature were speaking to me, giving me a little nod of encouragement and approval.”
Andrew Denman’s first Greenwich Workshop Fine Art Giclée Canvas is presented as a Gallery Wrap canvas. Denman represents the leading edge of today’s contemporary wildlife art movement. The purchase of Primary would be an important and beautiful addition to any farsighted collector’s home.