Today we share the latest installment of Cookies with a Curator—a series of virtual conversations with TMA collection artists about past work, current practice and works in progress. Senior Curator Christine Brindza, Glasser Curator of Art of the American West, talked with California-based artist Dennis Ziemienski in May 2021.
Among other topics, Brindza and Ziemienski discussed Over the Underpass (2010), one of Ziemienski’s works that appeared in the exhibition The New Westward: Trains, Planes, and Automobiles that Move the West on view at TMA from October 15, 2016 – February 12, 2017. Following the exhibition, the painting became part of TMA’s permanent collection.
Dennis Ziemienski, Over the Underpass, 2010, oil on canvas. Collection of the Tucson Museum of Art. Gift of the artist. 2017.4
About the Artist
Dennis Ziemienski graduated cum laude from the California College of Arts and Crafts. Interest in representational drawing and painting eventually led him to New York and a successful career in illustration. He turned his attention to fine art in 1999. His paintings and illustrations have been in many solo and group exhibitions and have won numerous awards, including, the 2014 Jesse Arms Botke Award, California Art Club 103rd Annual Gold Medal Juried Exhibition. He was selected as the official artist of the 2006 Kentucky Derby.
Ziemienski’s work is in the permanent collections of the Tucson Museum of Art, Bakersfield Museum of Art, the Booth Western Art Museum, Western Spirit: Scottsdale’s Museum of the West, and the Whitney Western Art Museum at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West. His work can be seen at Medicine Man Gallery in Tucson, Altamira Fine Art in Jackson Hole and Scottsdale, and Blue Rain Gallery in Santa Fe.
