About

Hi, I’m Denise. I love to create visual art and I write a newsletter on Substack called Wonderwise where I share stuff that I find helpful in my art practice and in my life. Stuff that I think will be helpful to you too: creative inspiration, wonder-full ideas, and wise insights. You can subscribe and get latest updates for free in your email inbox.

My work lives permanently here on my website, though. You’ll find a portfolio of my work and an archive of both the newsletter and past blogs.

I’m committed to my small little corner of the internet because—as we all know—platforms owned by Tech Bros turn against people.

A Little About Me

I am a self taught artist and I live in northern California, born and raised. I love to draw, paint and collage. I keep a lot of sketchbooks and art journals and also work outside of those too. I steep myself in story, nature, ideas and inspiration—and out comes what I think and feel! You can probably see by my work that it’s wild inside!

I create because I must. I share because I must. I believe making and experiencing art conjures a rich and beautiful life—and world.

So about sharing…this is how I look at our current internet situation:

There’s so much good to be found on the internet. Real humans—artists, scientists, every day creative folks—amaze me every day with creativity and insight and wisdom.

And yet…there’s also the current social chaos in the year 2025, where the wealthiest 1% of all human beings and their greedy minions pull levers of division, propaganda, uncertainty and fear.

I for one refuse to give up the world, the planet and connection with one another to the worldwide enshitifiers—not to oligarchs and fascists and not to Tech Bros building power and profit at the expense of planet and people.

I’m not leaving. I’m not retreating. And I’m not playing into their hands either.

Along with maintaining my own website and taking back my attention (a whole other subject), I show up on platforms that have the power to connect me to more people—but only for as long as they serve and don’t work against me and other humans.

I’ve deleted Fakebook and I’ve stopped posting on Instagram, as Meta along with Twitter have been completely enshitified to dust (I’m working on reducing my relationships with Amazon, Google, and other corporate monsters).

For now, I will be sharing images of my work on Pinterest and I’ll be publishing my newsletter on Substack—while making sure that same content lives here on my website.

I expect I will jump ship for other platforms regularly going forward. Pinterest and Substack, for example, probably won’t last too long. Pinterest’s image scroll is plunging into advertising darkness as we speak, and there are concerns about Substack. Owners Chris Best and Hamish McKenzie are Tech Bros, after all.

So then I’ll find the next good platforms. And on we go. Until society finally figures out how to free the internet for the good of all (i.e., drum up the the political and legislative will for solutions that already exist), my plan is to always update my own website—while sharing on the least enshitified platforms of the moment.

So there you have it. A little about me.

Subscribe to my Wonderwise newsletter to keep up with what inspires me, what I learn and what I’m making lately.