The Art of Arranging

Denise Shives

Mixed Media Artist  

Denise Shives’ work is rooted in a lifelong love of collecting and arranging. Whether composing a room, styling objects on a shelf, or gathering natural elements into a vessel, she is drawn to the act of bringing disparate elements together to create something both compelling and beautiful. Her mixed media practice reflects this sensibility—an intuitive process of layering materials that transforms the ordinary into something evocative and meaningful.

Working with wood panels and canvas, Shives incorporates paper, paint, and found materials, embracing a process that is both tactile and exploratory. Her compositions evolve organically, with moments of discovery often emerging through adjustment and refinement. The result is work that feels both spontaneous and resolved, guided by instinct and a deep sense of visual harmony.

Whether it be furniture in a room, items on a shelf, clippings from nature in a vessel, I love arranging things. For as long as I can remember, I’ve gathered and collected things that I love and enjoy finding ways to put them all together to create something interesting and beautiful. Making beauty in this messy world is the only thing I can control, and I am fulfilled by creating things that bring joy and inspiration to others. It’s the way I live my life and the way I approach my mixed media art.

 The magical feeling of having a pile of collected materials that I love, and the vision of arranging it all into something interesting or beautiful, is one of my favorite stages of creating. The process of my art is full of glue, paint, papers and materials with the approach of arranging them on a wood panel or canvas. The beauty shows up in different stages, often when making adjustments to areas that are not working. I get kind of mindless while creating this kind of art, it feels natural to me and I love the feeling I get in my gut in the end when I know I’ve solved all the problems and created a complete design that I love.