Denise Bankuti belongs to an international group of artists new to high culture, as we have known it. The range of her work, the variety of styles employed, the skill demonstrated in all of these, the shifting thematic ideas, the clear emotional and intellectual profundity often present, all bespeak the activity of an artist who has truly crossed the threshold of a new age in the high art of culture we inhabit and simultaneously create.
The artist constructs an alternate reality.
Other people can follow it, but the artist cannot impose it upon them. They must impose it on themselves. If enough people accept the artist's alternate reality, that way it will penetrate and recognize the culture. For the time being, in this paticular time and place. Denise Bankuti's paintings are doing that job for us.
by James Mann
Curator, Las Vegas Art Museum
Tina Turner Collection
Burt Lancaster Collection
"Van Gogh"
