Painter, printmaker, sculptor, and designer, Dennis Cady is based in Queens, the Hudson Valley and Arizona. A native of Oregon, Cady studied at Portland State University with Robert Colescott and Frederic Littman. Awarded a two-year Max Beckmann Fellowship at the Brooklyn Museum Art School, he moved to New York, where he has resided since 1969. He also studied at the Pratt Graphics Art Center and the State University of New York.
As a prolific artist, Cady has worked in all media. During the 1970s he designed sets, posters, costumes and props for the Murray Louis Dance Company, Nikolai Dance Company, and other companies. For the last two decades, he has continued to design, creating an artist’s studio-residence in the Hudson Valley and NE Arizona. Focused on painting and printmaking for the first half of his career, his love of materials and explorations of 3-dimensional form and space in architectural settings has also drawn him to direct wood-carving.
In a career spanning over 40 years, the artist has traveled throughout the U.S., Canada, Europe, and Latin America, capturing the drama and spirit of earth, sea and sky in open-air, on-site watercolor and acrylic on canvas paintings. Extended journeys have yielded many series of works that combine keen observation of form, atmosphere and light with rich color, expressive brushwork, and a distinct sense of place. Throughout his career, he has worked indoors during the winter months creating woodcuts, monoprints, and linocuts that interpret and recreate his on-site paintings.
Cady is represented in both private and public collections. These include the Museum of Modern Art, Center for Book Arts, New York Public Library Print Collection, South Street Seaport Museum, U.S. Department of State, Newark Public Library Print Collection, and the University of Toronto. Selected corporate collections include Bristol Meyers Squibb, Citibank, Hilton Hotels, IBM, Merrill Lynch, MetLife, Mobil Oil Company, The New York Times, New York Health and Hospitals Corp., Pfizer and UPS among many others. Numerous one-man and group shows in New York, national and international venues are among his credits.