Visual Arts Concentration student Alex Denhart ’20 is particularly inspired by artist Catherine Kehoe. Photo by Jenny Guo /The Choate News
Every day after school, Alex Denhart ’20 is in the Visual Arts Concentration studio, on the second floor of the PMAC, for two hours. While working on her pieces, Denhart listens to music, the world around her becomes a hazy blur, and her sole focus becomes the art.
Denhart finds inspiration for her pieces in all corners of the world: “Right now, I’m really interested in praying mantises,” she said. “I had a recent experience with a praying mantis that had only one wing. I think one of them was bitten off, but it was super friendly and was climbing on my head. It’s little moments like that one that I find the most inspiration.”
Denhart likes to celebrate more intimate moments in life — time spent with a friend, nature, or alone. She takes inspiration from her own life experiences. Her pieces exude vulnerability.
Denhart’s artwork has its signature style, characterized by its combination of representational concepts and abstraction. For instance, Denhart creates portraits, mediums, and shapes that are interacting within the piece, blurring the line between concrete and abstract elements.
There was a long period of time when Denhart defaulted to monochromatic pieces, not adding color because of its infinite, and slightly daunting, possibility. For her, color makes a piece more vulnerable because it’s personal and conveys strong emotion. It gives people a greater grasp of the piece’s general mood and can allude to some of the artist’s decisions in creating the piece.
Denhart said, “I was pretty vulnerable everytime I added color because I wasn’t sure of how it would be perceived by the public, but that’s something I want to explore more. It makes it more of an extended conversation with the viewer.”
Denhart likes to explore different styles, and she takes inspiration from other artists. One artist she’s particularly interested in is Ms. Catherine Kehoe. Ms. Kehoe is known for her oil paintings, most notably her paintings of still life. Her focus is on the interaction of color, shapes, and light. “An apple will have these interlocking planes, so it looks like it was cut out like a wood block and wasn’t completely finished,” said Denhart. Ms. Kehoe’s style is very abstract; it uses many shapes and lines making it geometric.
Mimicking Ms. Kehoe’s style is a challenge for Denhart because it’s a very technical process that involves a great deal of precision. Denhart welcomes the challenge, though, treating it as an ongoing exploration of a new type of artwork.
Denhart’s connection with art has been steady since she was a child taking her first drawing class. It’s something that’s been influential throughout her time at Choate, and a passion that doubtlessly will extend beyond high school. “The beauty of art is that it’s one of those things that you can always have for yourself,” said Denhart. Art cultivates many different relationships: between the artist and the piece, the piece and the viewer, and the artist and the viewer. It’s a form of expression which is unrestrained. Denhart hopes to continue sketching her whole life, as a hobby and an ode to her inner thoughts.
