Denomie spent the first four years of his life living on his reservation before he and his family were relocated to Chicago. He currently lives in Shafer, Minnesota. In 1995, he graduated from the University of Minnesota with a Bachelor of Fine Arts with a minor in American Indian Studies. In 2008, he was the recipient of a Bush Artist Fellowship; in 2012, a McKnight Fellowship; and in 2015, a Native Arts and Culture Fellowship and Joan Mitchell Painters and Sculptures Fellowship. Denomie paints in vivid colors, allowing his paint and brush strokes to enhance his sometimes comical, biting, sullen, or surreal subjects. His narrative paintings usually involve characters that comment on past and current events about, usually, Native Americans.