2516 East Colfax Avenue

Denver, Colorado 80206
(adjacent to Tattered Cover Bookstore)

Open Seven Days a Week

10:00am - 6:00pm

and by appointment

We also have free garage parking off

Columbine Street.

Telephone: (720) 383-1839   

Fax: (303) 872-9020

Email: charles@thedenverartgallery.com

Delzell's paintings of women project a courtly international sensibility. The largely European settings are painterly, and the whole is full of allegorical detail. Her works are identified by a characteristic depiction of women seated and holding birds against evocative landscape backgrounds. Birds, rich textiles, and festoons of fruits are decorative motifs.

It is easy to see that Delzell blurs the boundaries of the religious and the secular. Her images of women holding birds are reminiscent of the Renaissance Madonna and Child paintings, but with a Post-Modern twist. Fruit symbolizes unity, fulfillment, and the nourishment of the soul. It also expresses the hints of immortality and renewal that are found in the familiar and everyday.

In their rich dress, Delzell's women are the embodiment of the classical virtues. They have fought their dragons and returned home victorious. Thus, their air of completeness, strength, inner peace, and beauty. The birds they hold are clues to their heroism, and their meanings are specific to the type of bird depicted. The dove possesses the virtues of peace, meekness, and purity. According to the ancients, the peacock's flesh does not decay, and so the peacock represents immortality and resurrection, and the "eyes" of the tail symbolize the witness of the Church. Both roosters and peacocks have a habit of strutting and morning crowing, and have been used as a symbols of watchfulness and vigilance. All of the birds relate to the women like an adoring child or pet. They embody and project unconditional love. The specific and localized settings in which the women are depicted imply that such personal victories are possible for all of us regardless of our circumstances or environment.