Derse Art Gallery

Derse Art Gallery We create and sell a large variety of all types of high-quality artworks, including originals.

After art school I lost the money, I had saved, so I had two choices one was to become a street performer, the other was...
08/04/2026

After art school I lost the money, I had saved, so I had two choices one was to become a street performer, the other was to move to Oconomowoc with my uncle. So, I moved there briefly, where I discovered all types of ponds surrounded by weeping willows. Years later, after nursing school, I did this painting which served as a rebirth to my art.

In this painting I was trying to make what looked like lively omnipotent trees. I was going for a wild and untamed feeling immersed in color, as if the trees were growing and undulating through the whole piece, as if to make the viewer think the trees themselves were creating the piece! I pushed this last idea by making the roots in the second tree from the right appear like a hand squeezing what appears a tube of paint downward so that it spews out creating the body of water in the foreground.

Other people have mentioned seeing the face and shoulder of a maid in the trunk of the tree that is second from the right.

My art had been leaning in a more linear direction, so this painting was a real confidence booster for me, because in it I was able to fill in blank space better to end up with something with more body.

The painting is titled “Freshly Squeezed”. The original was done in oil in 2014 and was 18 1/8" X 23 15/16”.

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This is a painting of a dear friend who passed away. He was a great inspiration to me and my quest to be a great athlet...
08/04/2026

This is a painting of a dear friend who passed away. He was a great inspiration to me and my quest to be a great athlete. We were all in Mexico for vacation back in the 90s, and he and my brother had rented some dirtbikes and were cruising around.

In this painting, as in the one I titled “Zach and Hannah”, I was trying to fill in space with geometric shaped marks “radiating” from different light sources. I had formally been having problems filling in enough blank space on the canvas, but with these two paintings I felt a great resurgence in my confidence!

This acrylic painting is titled “Portrait of George and David” and was painted in 2007, and it is: 29 1/2" X 42 13/16".

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When I was living in Iowa, I had just finished a consignment piece which depicted a person’s child which inspired this p...
08/04/2026

When I was living in Iowa, I had just finished a consignment piece which depicted a person’s child which inspired this piece. I had moved away from my brother and sister for a while and I began missing them, so I did this painting of them.

They must have been about nine or so. They are in the middle of a very “noisy” painting. In the lower center my sister sports a pink bathing suit and a green ball cap, my brother stands next to her with a down-turned white cap.

I think I made this painting because I feared for them and wanted to protect them from the crazy world, which they seemed immune to, yet unexperienced to as well. So, I constructed the crazy subject matter in a way of saying “Hey, this is what’s coming!”. The original idea was to create a beach and ocean painting, but through expressionism, this all took on new forms; what it entails is up to interpretation.

This acrylic painting is titled “Portrait of Zach and Hannah”, and was painted in 2006, and it is: 29 9/16" X 42 9/16.

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When I had returned from a meditative adventure out west in 2003 to a place called “The Expanding Light” I had a lot of ...
05/30/2026

When I had returned from a meditative adventure out west in 2003 to a place called “The Expanding Light” I had a lot of energy, and I wanted to put it into a work and decided to work with what I had on hand. So, I picked up some color pencils and a holed sheet of paper and went to town. I wanted to build the most intense color/ light infused imagery to get back into using the colors after my long trip.

Although this work is abstract, I used the colors in ways to practice earthy tones and refracted tones. I was unsure where I was going with this piece but was surprised once I finished that it somehow worked!

I completed in in a couple of days, its title is “Energy” and it is: 8 1/2" X 10 11/16".

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In this painting I was attempting to create the lightest infused pastel scene I could come up with while maintaining a r...
05/30/2026

In this painting I was attempting to create the lightest infused pastel scene I could come up with while maintaining a recognizable landscape. I had been studying Van Gogh and Monet’s work and wanted a painting infused with light. I picked a scene in front of my childhood home for the basic subject matter.

I did this project to practice mixing the different tints of colors, so that I could get an understanding of the shards of sunlight that may or may not decimate a landscape. I figured by understanding the different tints of colors, I could avoid laying on an excess of color, shorting drying time.

In most paintings a painter can always go darker with colors, so understanding how to use and incorporate the lighter colors as much as possible seems the most critical essence of beginning to paint in a way that incorporates them and therefore was my lesson plan for myself in this piece.

I started this composition in 1999 and finished it later in 2020, its size is: 18" X 24".

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In this painting I incorporated more surreal or spiritual imagery. For about five years of my early life, I lived surro...
05/29/2026

In this painting I incorporated more surreal or spiritual imagery. For about five years of my early life, I lived surrounded by nature in Kentucky, the vines, leaves, and fields are one of the most wonderous varieties I’ve yet to see. Since moving away, I’ve yearned to recreate some of the sights I saw from my younger vantage.

I used to envision humanoid shaped trees coming alive and decided to make a painting of such. I started this painting in 2014. In this painting I added an angelic being that serves as both a life source and a focus point for the other humanoids to dance around. The center figure is supposed to serve the rest of the painting bringing life to the dancing trees, shock, awe, and inspiration.

This painting is my favorite of my paintings because it grasps a lot of the imagery of my youth that sticks out for me, so it serves as a reminder.

The original painting was completed by Joey Derse in 2020 and was 39 5/8" X 51".

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When I was in high school our parents took us to Guatemala, and Honduras. Since then, I’ve always wanted to recreate th...
05/29/2026

When I was in high school our parents took us to Guatemala, and Honduras. Since then, I’ve always wanted to recreate the beautiful tropical flora and fauna I saw there. I created this painting using a photo we took when we were down there as well as a patchwork of memories to create the most colorful and detailed version, color wise, I could come up with.

I started this painting in acrylic in 2005, but it always felt like it was missing something. After travelling to Hawaii, I had a deeper understanding of lush tropical forests and got back to working on it again and was able to finish it with some oil paint in 2022. The title of it is “Deep Pool”, its size is: 30" X 42 1/2"

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In this painting I was once again trying to capture the light bouncing off the waves. I decided to change the houses of...
05/29/2026

In this painting I was once again trying to capture the light bouncing off the waves. I decided to change the houses of the background for luminescent mountains. The leafy trees of the foreground offer the viewer a damp lushness, as opposed to the mountains of the background which seem ridged and stoic as if made of ice. Both offering less cheer than the sky.

I completed this oil painting in 2020, its size is 18" X 24".

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I painted this painting one morning just outside of Loveland, Colorado. In this painting I was trying to incorporate mo...
05/29/2026

I painted this painting one morning just outside of Loveland, Colorado. In this painting I was trying to incorporate more darks and a crisper composition than some of my looser paintings. It was a crisp morning that day, as one right after a big rain, which made it easy.

The large tree branches that dominate the upper painting reach upward into the brightest areas of the sky as if trying to understand them. Other limbs echo the mountainous ridge, which is all echoed once more by the fence and stream below. Buildings of primary colors dot the background. Bold colors fill space as seen often in watercolor paintings.

I completed it in 2020, its size is: 18" X 24". Titled "The Front Range".

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This mixed media is sort of what one might call an “energy painting”, as it was highly inspired and fueled by the artist...
03/31/2026

This mixed media is sort of what one might call an “energy painting”, as it was highly inspired and fueled by the artists, I had the pleasure to be working among during its creation.

The statement this piece makes is that the eternal dance we all exist within is life. I was inspired by the concept of looking up at the sky through the trees coupled with the famous painting known as “The Dance”.

The artists I was working with at the time loved Matisse, Picasso, and Gauguin’s work, so I added some like-elements and was somehow able to these three different elements together!

Title: “The Eternal Dance”. This mixed media was finished in 2021 and is 10 15/16" x 10 15/16".

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