Dena Tollefson Unboxing Arteza 24 Premium Oil Paints and 11x14 Stretched Canvas Painting Review
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I have found my favorite brushes, easels, wet and dry palettes, oil paint, acrylic paint, palette knives, art instruction books and art inspiration books.
You will find these Arteza oil paints and canvas as well as Golden, Cobra, Winsor & Newton, H2 Oil, Fredrix, and others.
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Watch the unboxing of Arteza 24 Premium Oil Paints and Arteza stretched canvas and I will give you my first impressions.
Friends at Arteza sent me these art supplies as a gift in exchange for an honest product review, which I will give you here.
Watch all the way through the video to see me creating a new painting with the materials they sent as well as an honest assessment and product review of how the materials performed.
I unbox, tone the canvas, test the paint's mixing properties, paint a full color underpainting with paint brushes, and finish the painting with my full Daubism technique of impasto in oils using palette knives.
My technique can be done in either oil paint and acrylic paint. This painting is completed in oil.
Tollefson uses both palette knives and spoons to paint 3D, touchable, textured works of art on canvas.
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Learn more at her website
Tollefson is a Christian and her artwork is positive message, uplifting and healing. Collectors use her paintings for meditation, calming, and healing thought.
Artist’s Statement: I am a Colorist and am known for contemporary realism focusing on botanicals and landscapes, especially ponds, flowers and skies. My sky paintings are my idea of how God created Earth with one breath. Every morning and every evening He creates a new sky for us.
I employ vigorous brushwork and texture through the palette knife in my work so that people may experience along with me the feel of the painting. I find mosaics fascinating how the individual pieces all contribute to the whole- I want my paintings to have a similar idea where overlapping petals of paint all stand on their own and then contribute to the total.
My work known as Daubism is created using a palette knife where each stroke of color is isolated from the others. Most paintings will have hundreds of different colors, these colors are all individually hand-mixed from a limited set of colors creating unique colors which relate to one another. I am striving for a sensual, tactile surface in paint.
I am always excited when someone connects with my artwork- I am delighted to share a vision of color and beauty with my collectors- Dena Tollefson
Dena Tollefson is an American artist whose bold contemporary paintings focus on joyful use of color, texture and movement, creating a low relief effect in paint- a hybrid between low relief sculpture, mosaic, and traditional painting.
She is known for floral painting, especially how to paint sunflowers.
Dena Tollefson (nee Dena Schaefer), born 1965, is a full-time, professional artist. Tollefson graduated from Iowa State University in 1988 and lived in Dallas Texas before returning to Iowa in 1991 where she developed her unique, highly textured painting style. She lives in Cedar Rapids, Iowa with her husband and family.
Tollefson is represented in galleries nationally in New Mexico, California, Iowa, Wisconsin and Illinois.
Her Daubism body of work is a unique process she developed, where daubs of individually mixed paint are applied with a palette knife. The largest daubs are applied with a serving spoon, allowing ridges of paint which catch the light and appear to dance and scintillate as the viewer moves past the painting. Tollefson’s work focuses on botanicals, ponds, skies, and her Corn Series of work, biographies where people are depicted as ears of corn. Her work is highly tactile.
Museum, Corporate & Selected Private Collections
Cedar Rapids Museum of Art, Cedar Rapids, IA.
Farm Credit Services Omaha, NE
Terso Solutions Corporation Madison, WI
Iowa Department of Human Services, Cedar Rapids, IA
Genesis Hospital, Davenport, IA
Monsanto Corporation St Louis, MO
Ronald McDonald Facility/Unity Point Health Cedar Rapids, IA
Ruberry, Stalmack and Garvey Law Firm Chicago, IL
Marion Arts Council Marion, IA
Mercy Hospital Cedar Rapids, IA
PCI Cardiologists Inc., Cedar Rapids, Iowa
St Luke’s Hospice Cedar Rapids, IA
StarcomMediaVest CEO, Chicago, IL
St Luke’s hospital, Cedar Rapids, IA.
United Fire and Casualty Owner, Cedar Rapids, IA
Mableton Bank, Mabelton, GA
Lil’ Drug Stores CEO, Scottsdale, AZ
Two of Dena Tollefson's paintings are in the permanent collection of the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art. Her original paintings hang publicly and in private collections throughout the world. Prints and other licensed products are available worldwide