The John Denning Studio, Artist-In-Residence Gallery at Cornerstone Sonoma is the latest San Francisco Bay Area gallery to open under the ownership and direction of John Denning and Brigitte Micmacker, co-owners of a new leaf gallery | sculpturesite, also located at Cornerstone Sonoma and formerly of Berkeley and San Francisco.

John Denning, a Bay Area figurative artist originally known for his abstracted watercolors in vibrant colors, has also become a sought after bronze artist. His mastery of the three-dimensional medium can be traced to his early interest in clay sculpting, while his background as a painter is evident in the rich patina on the expressive figures.

Building on these two mediums, Denning has now developed a fresh body of work, incorporating elements of both two and three-dimensional work to create captivating and timely archival digital prints on aluminum, paper and silk. Here, Denning further abstracts the figure and achieves an eerie sense of motion. In these haunting collaged compositions, the artist uses menacing birds or dogs, or fragments of human figures in shadowy silhouettes.

“These digital collages utilize a large variety of resources, mostly my own drawings, photographs, and scanned images from various print and digital media. As in my oil and acrylic paintings, proportional contrasts remain an important element in my digital work, such as a thin sliver or line against a broader mass or empty space used to create a dynamic, rather than symmetrical, balance.”

Denning graduated from the Art Center School of Design in Los Angeles (now Pasadena). Some of his influences include painters Nathan Oliveira, Richard Diebenkorn, Robert Rauschenberg and Francis Bacon, and sculptors Manuel Neri and Stephen de Staebler. His work has been shown throughout the San Francisco Bay Area, New York and Chicago, and as far as Hanoi and Paris since the 1970s.

A grand opening reception will take place on Saturday, August 18, from 1 to 5pm. John Denning will give a detailed presentation of his creative process at 2, 3 and 4pm. The event is free to the public and will include live music from Bob Johnson, Sonoma wine and hors d’oeuvres.

The John Denning Studio is located at Cornerstone Sonoma on the Highway 121 Carneros Corridor, 5 miles south of the Sonoma Square. Gallery hours are currently Thursday through Sunday from 11 am to 5pm. For more details about Denning and his work, please visit our sister gallery site at http://www.sculpturesite.com or 707-933-8600.