Artist Gallery Statement — Brian Dunning

2026

I have never been able to stop making art — it is how I process the world and return to what matters. At the center of my practice is a belief I have carried since childhood: “Play is the portal to curiosity, wonder and joy.” That conviction shapes everything, from the materials I use to the marks I leave on the canvas.

My work operates on what I call the discipline of non-discipline: a commitment to trusting the unknown, maintaining organic flow, and treating spontaneity as a guiding principle rather than an accident. I paint to stay present — to access the emotional directness and instinctive responsiveness that formal training can sometimes train out of us.

Process is central to the work. Active play removes inhibitions that restrict my creative flow, allowing me to discover my authentic voice and feel alive. Over time, I developed a practice of sustained motion: I kept painting over things, whether I liked them or not, using different tools, it forced things to change and then my responses changed. The resulting surfaces — layered, textured, built through accumulation and response — are a record of that ongoing conversation.

I want viewers to feel that conversation when they stand in front of the work. The color, texture, and layering are intended as an open invitation: to slow down, engage intuitively, and experience the joy and wonder that is infused in each piece.

My influences include Jasper Johns, Frank Stella, and Robert Rauschenberg. I studied at Cornish Institute (now Cornish College of the Arts) in Seattle in the 1980s, under Charles Stokes, Norie Sato, John Overton, Bill Hoppe, and  David Nechak. 

Trained in the Montessori Method, I have long believed in honoring the curiosity of the inner child as a creative resource rather than something to be set aside. I teach encaustic painting at the John C. Campbell Folk School in North Carolina and offer workshops locally in mixed-media collage. 

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 currently building a sustainable professional studio practice and reclaiming my place as a working artist.