Abstract intrigue:
A show celebrates the worlds envisioned by Dale Chisman (Denver Post)
By Kyle MacMillan
Unlike portrait or landscape artists who endeavor to re-create the world around them, abstractionists invent their own visual worlds. It is not easy. Dozens, maybe even hundreds of artists in Colorado pursue such nonobjective art, yet only a few have built a truly distinctive body of work and achieved real national recognition.

One is Dale Chisman, whose 3 1/2-decade career is being celebrated through Jan. 14 with an exhibition at the Rule Gallery that combines five of his early New York paintings, from 1975-78, with eight recent works.

"There is always some kind of surprise,” Payton said of his work. “It’s not rote. So many artists get kind of formulaic, and he doesn’t. It just continues to be impressive.” Cydney Payton, director-curator of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver.

Dale Chisman's impressive career is on display at Rule. (Westword)
By Michael Paglia
Chisman has a dead-on instinct for putting colors together and for assembling forms. He does both of these things instinctually, not knowing how his paintings will come out until the end. The results are almost always brilliant and beautifully crafted.

New York years colored Chisman's work (Rocky Mountain News)
By Mary Voelz Chandler
Even before looking at art became a way to make a living, it certainly was a way to make a life. And when writing about art became part of my way to make a living here years ago, the first artist I wanted to write about was Dale Chisman.

That's because I was so impressed by his paintings, where he created his own vocabulary of symbols, expansive works where every mark was just so (and just so important) in the composition, and where there was so much going on beneath the surface of each painting. I could fall into them for hours.