Today we’d like to introduce you to Teresa Dunn.
Teresa, we’d love to hear your story and how you got to where you are today both personally and as an artist.
Since I was a child I was always drawing or painting pictures of people, animals, little scenes, but I never actually considered art making as a career. Even when I went to college at Missouri State University, I was a math major for 2 years before I realized with a lot of anxiety that I couldn’t envision my future on the path I was on. With my parents’ support I started taking drawing classes and it snowballed from there, I went onto get my MFA at Indiana University in Bloomington and am fortunate to be able to make a living by creating and teaching others to be makers too.
We’d love to hear more about your art. What do you do you do and why and what do you hope others will take away from your work?
For the past 20 years I have most made narrative figure paintings, which in other words is like visual storytelling. I feel compelled to paint the figure, or images that are related to people. The bulk of my work is made in oil paint and my most recent body of work are all circular, tondos. I’m interested in people and how we interact, I’m fascinated by the ways in which identity and relationship characteristics are communicated in visual ways. My most recent works emphasize this through engaging color relationships, juxtapositions of flat shapes against pattern, and vastly diverse ranges of mark making. I’m not interested in telling specific stories that are linear, but I would describe my current paintings as visual poetry. I’m going to close this answer with the artist statement to my most recent body of work called: A woman, an island, the moon.
Islands are simultaneously protected and isolated by the waters that surround them. These circular paintings are like miniature islands that encompass the life of my invented female protagonist and her small world. The circle, saturated color, and pattern allow me to explore metaphors for isolation and belonging, boundaries and openness, hope and hopelessness, home and homeland. This alternative constructed reality is observed from numerous points of reference including the protagonist, her cohabitants, an omniscient voyeur, and the viewer. My protagonist occupies a space that is simultaneously somewhere and nowhere. She exists between multiple and contradictory, realities. Expansive waters separate and connect here from there, yesterday from tomorrow, and a woman and her island from the moon.
Artists face many challenges, but what do you feel is the most pressing among them?
We are society that is surrounded 24/7 by images on our devices and screen. They are fast paced and ever-present. Art work needs space, time, and often times to be seen in real life–it is hard to slow our eyes and minds down when we are so desensitized by our technologically driven way of life. Technology isn’t all bad because it helps bring exposure and art to everyone, but I’m referring more to the speed of looking and overabundance of general imagery getting in the way of the need for a “slower read” when experiencing a work of art.
Do you have any events or exhibitions coming up? Where would one go to see more of your work? How can people support you and your artwork?
I am represented by First Street Gallery in New York City with my next major exhibition being in February and March of 2019. I show my work all across the country with upcoming shows over the next couple years at the Pendleton Arts Center in Pendleton, Oregon; the University of Alabama Hunstville; the Museum of Art at the University of Maine in Bangor; Western Illinois University in Macomb, Illinois, and Giertz Gallery at Parkland College in Champaign, Illinois. You can see more of my artwork at: www.teresa-dunn.com
People can support my work by visiting the shows, my website, and of course by buying a painting or drawing!
Contact Info:
- Website: www.teresa-dunn.com
- Email: teresadunn@hotmail.com
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/teresa.dunn2
Image Credit:
Teresa Dunn
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