Art League Gallery presents Be Still My Art…Celebrating the Everyday, a vibrant exhibition of still life oil paintings by Denise Liotta DeMarzo. Painted entirely from life rather than photographs, DeMarzo’s richly colored compositions elevate familiar objects—a ceramic bowl, a pear, a folded napkin, or a perfectly mixed martini—into striking studies of beauty, color, and thoughtful design. Her work celebrates the quiet beauty found in the everyday objects that often go unnoticed.
For DeMarzo, every painting begins long before the first brushstroke. She carefully arranges each still life in her studio, experimenting with composition, light, shadow, and the relationships between objects until everything feels precisely balanced. “Each painting starts with a search,” she explains. “The perfect cup, the proper angle of light, the fold of a napkin, the turn of a lemon, and, of course, editing.” This deliberate process forms the foundation of every painting, resulting in compositions that feel balanced, intentional, and timeless.
While composition forms the foundation of DeMarzo’s work, color is where her paintings truly come alive. Vibrant, saturated hues transform everyday objects into something extraordinary, inviting viewers to see familiar subjects in an entirely new way. Through her classical, representational style, DeMarzo invites viewers to slow down and rediscover the beauty hidden within familiar moments. “My hope is that my work invites viewers to pause a bit longer than expected—that they notice the beauty that was there all along,” she says. “It is a celebration of the everyday.”
A lifelong New Yorker now calling Hilton Head Island home, DeMarzo followed an unconventional path to becoming a professional artist. After careers as a critical care nurse and attorney, she devoted herself to representational still life painting. She studied extensively under artist Jon DeMartin in New York, spending an entire year drawing foundational forms before ever picking up a paintbrush. Today, that disciplined approach remains at the heart of her work, where carefully arranged objects painted directly from life become luminous studies of color, light, and composition.
DeMarzo’s work has earned recognition throughout the Lowcountry, including four invitations to the Art League of Hilton Head’s prestigious Biennale exhibition. Today, her paintings can be found at Art League of Hilton Head, Maye River Gallery in Bluffton, and The Artists of Sea Pines at the Sea Pines Community Center.
