Knowing Good
and Evil
Brooke Denton, tbt, 2026, oil on canvas, 36 × 48 inches.
Knowing Good and Evil is a presentation of new oil paintings by Brooke Denton at the Charles Adams Studio Project from September 4 - 25, 2026. An opening reception will be held during First Friday Art Tour on September 4 from 6-9pm.
Brooke Denton, tbt, 2026, oil on canvas, 48 × 60 inches.
Informed by photographs the artist took during adolescence, the work returns to a period shaped by rural life, religious belief, and the social structures of a small community on the New Mexico–Texas border.
Brooke Denton, tbt, 2026, oil on canvas, 30 × 40 inches.
The paintings become a form of corrupted memory: not an attempt to reconstruct the past exactly as it was, but to acknowledge that memory changes as we do.
Brooke Denton, tbt, 2026, oil on canvas, 20 × 24 inches.
Brooke Denton, tbt, 2026, oil on canvas, 20 × 24 inches.
The resulting images create disjointed narratives in which multiple moments and perspectives coexist.
Brooke Denton, tbt, 2026, oil on canvas, 30 × 48 inches.
Familiar images of childhood and rural life overlap with heirloom lace, peeling walls, and fragmented materials that carry stories of history and the weight of family traditions.
Brooke Denton, tbt, 2026, oil on canvas, 30 × 48 inches.
The work in Knowing Good and Evil exists in two realities: the past persists through imagery while the present enters through the act of making; what happened, what was remembered, and what is understood now, can occupy the same image.
Brooke Denton, tbt, 2026, oil on canvas, 30 × 24 inches.
The work considers the ways belief can shape our understanding of ourselves and the world around us, particularly during adolescence, when ideas of right and wrong can feel absolute.
Brooke Denton, tbt, 2026, oil on canvas, each 48 × 36 inches.
Knowing Good and Evil is ultimately concerned with what it takes to reconsider the beliefs that have shaped us; what was inherited and what has been internalized can be examined without being neatly resolved.
Brooke Denton, tbt, 2026, oil on canvas, 36 × 48 inches.