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A Robert Frost quotation hangs on the studio wall of artist Denise Greenwood: “A poem begins as a lump in the throat.”

But Greenwood has scratched through some of the words and personalized it. “A poem begins as a lump of clay.”

Her art career came back to life as a lump of clay, too, but only after a long road of tragedy, loss and rediscovery.

First, her family home in Covington burned, and, with it, all the paintings she ever made as a budding teen artist. As her family tried to pick up the pieces and move on, Greenwood’s mother was diagnosed with fatal leukemia. Three years after her mother died, so did her father.

As if that weren’t enough loss for a 21-year-old, within that same three-year span, she married “too young” and divorced.

Instead of retreating into her art, she ran from it for 10 years.

“I can’t even explain it today,” she says. “Losing my art was like having a piece of me ripped out. This was a seed that I had been nurturing for so long, and it really set me back. It was like everything had been taken from me.”

She still can’t pinpoint exactly what led her back to making art, but it didn’t come until she spent a decade living a life unfulfilled.

At the age of 30, she plunged her hands back into making art—this time into a lump of clay rather than painting. She hasn’t painted a picture since.

“I always tell people I am not a two-dimensional artist, I am a three-dimensional artist,” she says. “Working in clay was like coming home; it is so forgiving.”

Her work can best be described as an offshoot of postmodern mannerism, a trend in contemporary art that combines cute and creepy. Greenwood calls her works “beautiful mutants.”

Her studio is filled with her “children,” faces and figures that border on grotesque, with misshapen, asymmetrical features, but with an endearing quality about them.

Her work is featured in 23 galleries nationwide and at five galleries locally, including her home studio. In November, her work will be featured in the juried Three Rivers Art Festival in Covington.

For a woman who gave up art for nearly a decade, Greenwood now says she can’t imagine her life without it.

“For me, there is no separation,” she says. “Life is art. Art is life.” artofgreenwood.com