Denise’s works are distinguished by their fine detail and nuanced play between dark and light. As denise paints, her purnu (stick) travels rhythmically across the canvas recreating the footsteps of Anangu (Aboriginal people), ancestral spirits, and important animals, dot by dot.
Denise explains “Kamiku Tjukurpa Iriitinguru means 'my grandmother's story from the past'. Every time I do painting I think of my Grandmother and feel connected to her. My paintings tell stories of desert tracks, which are embedded in the land from the past, but whose spirit is sustained into the future.
Growing up in Amata, I always remembered a dream I'd had when I was five years old. I dreamed of a whitefella, a man who was lost in the desert, wondering around with his kamula (camels). He had no food, no water. He couldn't survive because he didn't know the country. When I was older, I moved to Docker River and realised it hadn't really been a dream. It was my Grandmother's story that she had told me many times as a child, and it had stuck in my mind.
When I paint, it's like I'm looking down at the landscape from above. I paint the landscape and tracks around my Grandmother's country and where that man went with his kamula. The tracks are made by Anangu tjina (people's foosteps), kamula (camels), kalaya (emu), nintaka (goanna), pintjartanpa (rabbit), and papa inura (dingo).”