Denice was proudly part Native American (Micmac), hence her deep spiritual connection to nature.  As a very young child, she wandered into the woods. Her parents found her standing in complete innocence a few yards away from a bear with whom she was having a conversation.  Before her death in 2010, she made a pilgrimage to Nova Scotia to connect with the Micmac people, where she was embraced and graced with a healing ceremony.  It was this heritage that led her to love to sit beside horses and sing Native American chants to them. Denice bonded so closely with the innocence and beauty of the horse that wherever she went, horses were naturally drawn to her.

Her paintings were not something she created; they were an extension of her soul, much as though they were her children. While driving across Maui she’d often break into tears over the beauty that surrounded her.  She had an enormous capacity to tap into beauty beyond the surface and convey that beauty through canvas free of any worldly constraint or concern.

It’s this deep connection to nature, beauty, art, and horses, together with a bit of happenstance, that brought Denice Dawn’s complete collection to the John Hockensmith’s gallery to be shown publicly as a whole for the first time.  Though the two never met, their mutual devotion to the horse, art, nature and beauty make Denice and John kindred souls. She was simply waiting all of these years for the right gallery to appear.