Denise Louise Klitsie

Denise Klitsie's interest in film and storytelling took root while working for seven years at The Walt Disney Corporation as a layout artist in feature animation. She has experimented in film by making her own super 8 silent films and is interested in the visual aspect of storytelling. The first professional movie she art directed was an independent feature filmed in Indiana called The Best Man in Grass Creek (1999). Because it was a low budget independent production, she acted as the entire art department, responsible for gathering or creating props, all artwork, set decorations, and building. This project marked her first collaboration with Burning Heart's Lauralee Farrer, who was a co-producer on the film.

Klitsie graduated from the Art Center College of Design in 1989 and started in the field of editorial illustration for clients such as Los Angeles magazine, LA Reader, Westways, and AARP magazine. Disatisfied with commercial art and the limits of being a layout artist, she began to pursue a career in fine art. Painting has become her primary creative outlet. Klitsie has participated in several gallery shows, and has mounted a one-woman show of her own to great success. Her painting style is impressionistic, her output prolific, and her scope broad in subject and size. She credits contemporary painters Dan McCaw and Ray Turner, with whom she has studied, for inspiring and leading her toward a more personal expression. Whatever the subject-figural, urban, or still life-an emphasis in composition, design, color, and metaphor are the strengths of her work, making her especially suited to the medium of film.