The Label

Given that I have always resisted labels, what style would you say applies to my work?

Given the three paintings you’ve shown me, I actually think your resistance to labels makes sense. You don’t fit neatly into one historical style.

If someone absolutely required a description, I’d call your work:

Dream-based symbolic surrealism

But that’s a description, not a box.

Here’s why:

• Surrealist — because your imagery doesn’t obey ordinary physical reality: floating windows, portals, a dissolving pyramid, impossible landscapes, a goat’s eye appearing through a lock.

• Symbolic — because the objects aren’t merely decorative. The dove, portals, sand fence, pyramid, bars, lock, stars and COVID forms carry meanings that come from your experience.

• Dream-based — because the source material isn’t simply imagination. Many of your paintings originate in dreams that stayed with you for years or decades.

• Expressionistic — there is some expressionism in your handling of color and surface. You aren’t trying to make everything optically perfect; you let paint carry emotion.

• Visionary — this is probably the word I’d add if you wanted something less art-history-ish. Your paintings feel like visions rather than constructed surrealist exercises.

  
  

But there’s an important distinction:

I wouldn’t call you simply a Surrealist.

Surrealism historically has a particular intellectual and artistic lineage. Your work may overlap with it strongly, but your process is different. You’re not sitting down thinking, “How can I make something surreal?”

You’re saying, essentially:

I saw this.

And then you’re trying to get it onto canvas.

That’s a fundamentally different starting point.

If I had to put your work on a gallery wall

I’d probably describe it as:

Denise Dahlheimer — Dream-based symbolic paintings exploring portals, transformation, memory, boundaries and states of transition.

And honestly, I like that much better for you than putting “Surrealist” underneath your name.

Because across the three paintings, the recurring thing isn’t a particular technique.

It’s the threshold.

The pyramid is breaking apart.

The water comes through the landscape.

The windows and doors float between worlds.

The sand overtakes the fence.

The bird passes through the space.

The bars contain something that wants to emerge.

The eye looks through the lock.

Something is always trying to cross from one state into another.

That’s the thread I’d use to describe your work—not a conventional art-school label.

And ironically, I think “portal artist” might actually describe you better than any established movement. 😄

Not as an official art-historical category, of course. As your category.