Denise Duong is a Vietnamese American artist from Oklahoma City, OK. Growing up in a city that, at the time, forced you to “make the fun or there was no fun”, was like having a blank canvas. Not only did it inspire her to create the city that she wanted, but also inspired her art and her wanderlust spirit. The intrigue of what was beyond boundaries, state lines, oceans, skies, the human psyche and the human spirit, is what plays, and continues to play an integral part of her inspiration and creativity. After high school, she attended the School of the Arts Institute of Chicago. Her style with narration deepened while waiting for trains and buses, creating long detailed drawings of her interpretations of her day to day of the chaos of being a young person being thrown into the vibrant chaos of a big city. Moving to Hawaii afterwards, sparked the love for nature. Its presence in her work became more prominent, along with changing the way she traveled. After several years of traveling, she came back to Oklahoma City permanently in 2013, and it became the launching pad to all the adventures around the world to follow. These travels became a transformative time in her work and life. It evolved into a story of life that went beyond the explorations, but the deep emotional expressions and connections that accompanied it. Duong and her artist and life partner, Gabriel Friedman, and 2 girls, continue to create art in Oklahoma City while traveling often. Her canvas work and murals can be seen nationally and internationally.
My work is a deep dive into the emotional and spiritual aspects of being a human. The explorations of the curious and the love of all the tiny moments. There is always a story hidden behind the eyes and the way its interpreted. All the little aspects mixed into a potion of stories within a story.
Most of my work is interpreted by the female figure with all the aspects of nature and environmental elements. The work is narrative and can be quite personal, touching base on current times and the past. My work can require a lot of research as I love history and incorporating site specific pieces to have elements of the people, nature, and history of its’ surroundings.