Art Talk Statement — Brian Dunning
2026
Play is the portal to curiosity, wonder and joy.
Making art is a non-negotiable for me. It is the way I breathe, the way I listen, the way I find my way back when I’ve wandered too far from myself. When I paint, I return to the child I have always been: emotionally intuitive, open, alive to the world’s quiet and brilliant strangeness.
My practice lives inside what I call the discipline of non-discipline — a paradox that is also a promise. To trust the unknown, allow, and follow the current rather than force the river. Spontaneity is not an accident here; it is the method itself.
Active play removes inhibitions that restrict my creative flow, allowing me to discover my authentic voice and feel alive. My focus shifted when I no longer needed to know where I was going: I kept painting over things, whether I liked them or not; to stay in motion … by using different tools, it forced things to change, then my responses changed and so did the work.
My work opens a doorway or window — it poses a question, but does not give an answer. Color, texture, and layered mark-making open something up rather than close it down. This is an invitation to play, to be present and to remember what it felt like to be in a state of wonder.
I hope you experience curiosity, wonder and joy through the energy and playfulness that is infused in the artwork.
My art heroes — Jasper Johns, Frank Stella, Robert Rauschenberg — taught me that painting could hold contradictions and still sing. I studied at Cornish Institute in the 1980s under Charles Stokes, Norie Sato, Bill Hoppe, and David Nechak — true vision comes from within.
Montessori training gave me language for what I already knew: that the inner child is not something to outgrow, but to protect. For the past several years I have taught encaustic painting at the John C. Campbell Folk School in North Carolina — a practice as nourishing to give as to receive.
After 30 years teaching Interactive Design — web, motion graphics, and animation — in higher education, I retired and returned full-time to my studio practice. I am reclaiming my art career, building a sustainable professional studio practice rooted in the same spirit that started it all: Joy!
