Denmark’s paintings often begin with shapes and colors inspired by an actual place. He divides his time between a studio in San Francisco and one high on a mesa in Southern Utah; both sites have generated series of images. He painted Vulcano after visiting the island of the same name off the coast of Sicily. The work may begin with a shape or color reminiscent of a remembered place. With each new mark he drives the work closer to his sense of the "place" it could be. As he describes the process, "I try to establish a climate. Climate is intimately tied to temperature, which could also be color temperature. For example, in Vulcano there are the red and orange flashes of sulfurous heat but also a blue that cools it down. I played with the memory of the volcanic island surrounded by water."

Both natural and architectural environments suggest images to Denmark. Spiderwalk began life as a small maquette that he made of a fantasy landscape. He then translated the maquette's footprint onto canvas, where it became the underlying structure of the gestures and forms.

To start Komadabad he photocopied floor plans of Byzantine temples, then cut and recombined the images to make his own structures. "I’ve always loved blueprints," he says, "But I seem to need more than just a straightforward plan. Take Piranesi’s drawings. They’re obviously structures, but the line changes and introduces mystery into the form."

The play of edges that Denmark noticed in Piranesi’s work characterizes his own painting, developing in manifold ways. Looking closely at one of his intricate surfaces, a viewer finds many ways of making an edge. The stroke of a palette knife may ring against a slightly raised lip of paint laid on through a stencil or rise over a physical edge of collaged paper before dissolving into sponged color.

Some of the tools and processes that Denmark uses on his paintings — stencils, squeegees, and sponges — became familiar to him as a printmaker. Just as his extensive background in printmaking informed his approach to painting, the scale and improvisation of painting fed back into his prints. From his experiences in both media emerged his distinctive approach to building imagery in layers.

Even when he launches an image from something defined, such as an architectural schematic, Denmark usually pushes on through several formless stages, often covering the original image. Eventually, he tunes the chaotic layers to visual harmony, defining the image but also leaving it open enough to breathe. "The contrast between liquid paint blending without structure juxtaposed with something that is structured is fascinating. Can these opposite worlds come together and make their own place?" he asks.

These issues of control and surrender, of structure and dissolution, of existence and non-existence, have fundamental relevance to Denmark's life. He was pushed into confronting his own mortality as a person living with AIDS. "I had to hurry up and make sense of my life. Then, three years ago, my health improved and I realized that I was living to live, not living to die," he says. "It helped me look at why I make art. It’s the action that keeps me in place. The work is about documenting my process of doing what I’m doing."

The tension in Denmark's work between clarity and confusion reflects his understanding that both "good" and "bad" experiences are important to a full, vibrant life and art. "Some of my best conversations with the work are when we’re having an argument," he says. "I’m lost and I’ll make some kind of gestural mark or put it on the floor and spill something and push the squeegee across and step back and go... that’s what it needed. The work is a history of all the moments together. To me, it makes really interesting work when you see some clumsiness, and then there’s some elegance. You put it all together and that’s the work."

Essay © 2000 by Meredith Tromble