Whitener, Dena

Statement: After hitchhiking with a friend from Tucson, AZ to Quito, Ecuador in 1976, I met Jim.  He had also recently returned from a trip to South America.  We decided it would be a good idea to travel around Africa together.  After a year long trip, we decided we could probably handle marriage.  We married in 1978 and left the Chicago area and moved to Memphis.  We lived there for nine years and during that time we became avid whitewater paddlers.  Wanting to be closer to the whitewater action, we moved to Marietta, GA, but not before doing a 17 weeks long trip to Asia.  We lasted in Marietta for 18 years.  When it was time to move on, we sold our house, bought a travel trailer and traveled the USA for 14 months until I got house fever.  We missed Tennessee and happily we found Fairfield Glade and have lived here since 2009.

Biography: After we decided to live in Fairfield, on the afternoon when we put an offer on a house and were waiting for a return phone call, we went for a drive to check out the area.  I was thrilled when exactly one mile from our prospective house I discovered the Plateau Creative Arts Center.  I went immediately inside and was so impressed – couldn’t believe my good fortune. 

While living in Memphis, I was a designer for Cleo Wrap.  The world’s largest manufacturer of Christmas wrapping paper!  In Georgia, I worked for 18 years as the art department of a large screen printing company.  This job gave me a lot of flexibility and I was able to pursue my own artwork.  It’s during this time that I really got into colored pencil, became a member of the Colored Pencil Society of America and entered the CPSA International shows every year I could.  In 1996 I became a Signature Member of the CPSA.  My work has been published in several of the Best of Colored Pencil books.

Having studied art at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts (1970-1972) and the Instituto Allende in San Miguel, Mexico (1973-1974), I then completed my Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1986 at Memphis State University.  Though my degree was in painting, my senior project was a series of one color, hand-pulled lithographs.  I received the Creative Achievement Award for this work. 

Though the discipline for my BFA was painting, I always feel more comfortable with a pencil in my hand.  My work is realistic (but not photorealistic) still life drawings done from life.  I’d like my drawings to increase awareness of the beauty of common things that are all around us.  Colored pencil is a perfect medium for detailed work.