Artist Statement — Brian Dunning

2026

Play is the portal to curiosity, wonder and joy!

I've never been able to stop making art — it's how I process the world and find my way back to what matters. I paint to be present and live in the now; to get back to the innocence of a child, emotionally intuitive, in my natural state of curiosity, wonder and joy.

The spirit of play shapes everything about how I work. My practice is the discipline of non-discipline — trusting the unknown, allowing space for organic flow, and embracing spontaneity as a guiding principle in 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 started letting go: I kept painting over things, whether I liked them or not, because I wanted to stay in motion by using different tools, it forced things to change and then my responses changed.

I hope you feel the same aliveness that I do standing in front of my work. You may be surprised and pleasantly intrigued by what you see — excited by the color, textures and layers that open a doorway, an invitation to play, to live in the moment, and truly be yourself. I want you experience curiosity, wonder and joy brought to life by the energy and playfulness that is infused in every piece.

My art heroes — Jasper Johns, Frank Stella, and Robert Rauschenberg — have long influenced my sensibility. I studied at Cornish Institute in the ’80's (now Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle) under Charles Stokes, Norie Sato, Bill Hoppe, and David Nechak. 

Training in the Montessori Method taught me to nourish my inner child, something I've carried into my teaching — I've led encaustic painting workshops at the John C. Campbell Folk School in North Carolina once or twice a year for the past seven years. I retired after 30 years in higher education teaching Interactive Design — web, motion graphics, and animation. Now, I am building a sustainable professional studio practice rooted in the same spirit that started this journey: Joy!

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Brian is an experience artist with over 30 years of experience with abstract painting, encaustic painting and mixed media collage. In 2018, he was awarded an NGAE Fellowship in which he studied with Paula Roland in Sante Fe, NM. His work has been published in several books on collage; Creative Collage by Nita Leland, Collage Techniques by Brommer, and Artists' Artsembles by Color Q.