About the Artist

Artist’s Statement

Sometimes my paintbrush finds a little wonder of light attaching to life and land, moving through air and water. Whether in a tear at the corner of a surgeon’s eye, a rock at the bottom of a clear pool, or a haze of breath in a rugged canyon, I hope to catch a glimmer of the unexpected that invites others to look around and stay a while.

Biography

Denise Crute is an artist and physician who's formal art education began with studying at the local Arts Council in middle school, continued with painting and proctoring life drawing classes in college, selling artwork to pay living expenses in medical school, and persists with creation of fine art. She earned her BS in Zoology from Duke University, her MD from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and her Masters in Biomedical and Health  Informatics from the University of Illinois at Chicago. She completed her surgical internship and neurosurgical residency at Northwestern University, a neurophysiology fellowship at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and a neurocritical care fellowship at Mount Sinai in New York. Although her sketchbook and paints were with her through it all, art was a counterbalance for many years. She now realizes that  the central tenet of medicine and art is the same: careful observation.

Denise lives and works in Charlottesville, Virginia. Although fond of painting people or animals in their natural habitats, she also loves creating still life and landscape paintings, as well as medical and surgical illustrations.