Denise Mayo Stewart-Sanabria works in a range of ideas and visual expressions, often combining styles from different eras to make ironic statements. She believes humor can co-exist with 'serious' art. For this Flying Solo exhibition, she concentrates on the large-scale representation of people. She is interested in the presence of personality and individuality of a variety of people in groups. "My main goal is the simple impact of their presence. I work in charcoal on plywood, which I then cut out in various ways depending on the piece. I will occasionally add additional elements to a work, such as kudzu vines, eyeglasses, and sticks."

Denise Mayo Stewart-Sanabria was born in Worcester, Massachusetts. She studied at the School of the Worcester Art Museum and received her Bachelor of Fine Arts in painting from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. She has lived in Knoxville since 1985. After 15 years of running a small business in Knoxville, Stewart-Sanabria has begun to devote herself almost full-time to her art. Since 2001, her work has been chosen for more than 25 exhibitions in the region, including the Knoxville Art and Culture Alliance Open Show, Large Works on Wood at Millennium Park in Johnson City, Tennessee, and Art With A Southern Drawl at the University of Mobile in Mobile, Alabama. She shows her paintings at Hanson Gallery in Knoxville and 16 Patton in Asheville and participates in the Association for Visual Artists' Art at Work corporate art program in Chattanooga. Most recently, her work was selected for inclusion in the South Cobb Arts Alliance's National Juried Show in greater Atlanta, GA, and the Knoxville Museum of Art's Artscape Auction. She is a member of the Kaleidoscope Artist Group and is on the board of A1LabArts.