The Rochester Museum of Fine Arts is pleased to announce “Making Way”, an art exhibition featuring works by Denise Manseau in the Carnegie Gallery at the Rochester Public Library, beginning May 4, 2026.
Denise Manseau creates paintings that are inventions in response to place—inner landscapes that transform the visible world into tangible form. Her work emerges through a process of discovery, where observation and memory converge to shape environments that feel both familiar and imagined.
For Manseau, the act of painting is a journey into the unknown. She follows each convoluted path with faith, inquiry, and intuition: considering what medium will provide the proper translucency, what color will bring an element forward, or whether an entire area should be obscured. Within the uncertainty of this process, she takes comfort in knowing that every decision makes a way toward an elusive understanding—that moment when the eye and the heart become one.
Manseau holds a BFA from the University of Massachusetts Lowell and an MFA from Massachusetts College of Art and Design. She has attended the Haystack Mountain School of Craft in Maine as an Open Studio Resident and was a resident artist at the Vermont Studio Center. Paintings developed during her residency in Monasterace, Italy were included in a traveling exhibition at the Monasterace Museo and at Hillyer Art Space for International Artists in Washington, DC.
Recent exhibitions include 3S Artspace in Portsmouth, New Hampshire; Five Points Arts in Connecticut; Westbeth Gallery in New York; and The Gallery at Atlantic Wharf in Boston. She currently lives and works in Rye, New Hampshire.
“Making Way” will be on display until September 4, 2026, with a reception planned for from to . The public is encouraged to attend. The Carnegie Gallery is located at Rochester Public Library, 65 South Main Street, Rochester, NH 03867. Visit www.rochestermfa.org to learn more.
The museum gratefully acknowledges the generous support of its corporate sponsors, community partners, and collaborators, including the City of Rochester, Lilac Club Casino, Meredith Village Savings Bank, Back Hill Beer Co., Creative Guts Podcast, and the Greater Rochester Chamber of Commerce.
