About Denise de José

I think I was born an artist. Much of my childhood was spent studying art books that I had hauled home from the library and copying great artists' work in pencil. When I ran out of paper I drew pictures on the empty front pages of our Funk and Wagnall's encyclopaedia! The sight of a creamy piece of empty paper drove me to the heights of happiness! When I wasn't drawing, I had my nose in a book. For my Grade 6 book report, I scared my teacher when I chose Irving Stone's biography of Michelangelo, "The Agony and the Ecstacy". I realise now that I was a little bit obsessed.

When it came down to picking a "real" job, I chose nursing. Twenty years of shift work later, I had covered territory from Victoria to Toronto to Saudi Arabia. I kept trying new fields of nursing to explore in the vain hope that I would discover one I actually liked! When I met my husband in 1991, we moved to Winnipeg where I finally got to study art at the University of Manitoba. It was the best thing I could have done! I lost my "perfectionism" and my fear of failing. I got to be an expert at jumping off into the big dark void of creativity!

In 1997, we moved to the Okanagan and I started concentrating on my artistic career in quilting. Since then, I have busied myself with two solo shows and entering national and international competitions. I am currently at work on my third solo show "Full Circle" to be held in Salmon Arm, BC in June 2006.