“Fictions: Recent Works,” a collection of more than 30 of contemporary realist Daniel Sprick's extraordinary paintings, is open in the Gates Family Gallery at the Denver Art Museum through Nov. 2 and invites more than one visit by anyone with an interest in the artist as master painter — and as storyteller.

Gates Foundation curator of painting and sculpture Timothy Standring, who curated this exhibit, talked with and about the “brilliant painter” in a recent press tour. “It's very hard to do this,” Standring said of the paintings — most of them portraits. They are installed with uniform black frames, which serves to highlight the images further.

“Because he works in the vernacular of realism, viewers look for verisimilitude in Daniel Sprick's work, as if his paintings were a mirror of reality,” Standring continued. “The more we dwell on his paintings, however, the more we become aware that they are anything but a part of our world and are, instead, poetic renditions of his own making.”

Standring said that people think at first the paintings may be photographs, and with the Neapolitan yellow backing, they almost look backlit. Sprick's palette is mostly limited to earth tones for the portraits. “I started with brighter colors, but earth tones work best,” he said.

Sprick, when asked where he found his models, said some are just “random encounters — I am sometimes just interested in ordinariness ... It's what you bring to it that makes it interesting.” He said it takes two, three or four weeks to complete a painting, and he may return to it later.

With a harder look, one notices that the edges almost melt away and the line between realism and abstraction begins to blur into a poetic whole. Technical mastery is a given, and this artist's imagination leads one into a contemplative realm. Plan on spending an extended time in the gallery.

Sprick is inspired by the early artists of the Italian Renaissance, such as Giotto and Northern European masters such as Roger van de Weyden and Jan Vermeer. He started drawing himself at age 4, when he was enthralled by airplanes.

Sprick lived most of his life in Glenwood Springs and now is a Denver resident. He studied at the Froman School of Art and the National Academy of Design and received his BFA from the University of Northern Colorado in 1978. He speaks of being a painter for 40 years and said he started portraits around 2008. “Drawing is critical in portraits,” he said.

His astonishing still lifes may be more familiar to local art lovers, who have seen them at the DAM, Museum Outdoor Art and Gallery 1261, where he exhibits work in Denver. They include collections of random items: eggshells, insects, flowers, bones, bird cages, ordinary household items … carefully composed and seeming to glow with light. Some verge on the surreal, adding to their drawing power: What am I seeing here?

Both portraits and still lifes encourage the viewer to create stories: What has happened here? Who is this striking woman and where has she been? Is that “Moses” as wise as he appears to be?

“I coined his works fictions because they exist in a realm of their own,” said Standring. “I'm excited for visitors to experience Daniel's incredible ability to keep the fiction going, to mediate between what he sees and experiences as he paints.”

If you go:

Daniel Sprick's “Fictions: Recent Works” is in the Gates Family Gallery on the second level of the Hamilton Building at the Denver Art Museum, 100 W. 14th Ave. Parkway, Denver. Admission is included in general admission and free for members. The exhibit runs through Nov. 2. For information: denverartmuseum.org, 720-865-5000. Also new: “Beyond Pop Art: A Tom Wesselman Retrospective”; “At the Mirror: Reflections of Japan in Twentieth Century Prints”; and “Second Look: Quilts From the Denver Art Museum Collection.”