Tom Dunn
www.tomdunnart.com
@tomdunnart

Artist Bio:

Tom is Australian and was born in New York in 1979. He graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the Victorian College of the Arts and an Honors degree in Fine Arts from Monash University in Melbourne. Dunn is currently finishing his Master of Fine Arts degree at the University of California, Santa Barbara. While in the US, Dunn has completed artist residencies in Vermont, New Mexico, Utah, Torrance, CA and Los Angeles. Overseas residencies include the Philippines, Norway and China. His work has been exhibited in Europe, Asia, South Africa, the US and Australia. The artist is represented by Durden and Ray in Los Angeles.

Artist Statement:

I predominantly make expressionistic, semiabstract, figurative paintings. My paintings are improvised; the imagery derives from the subconscious. I begin by pushing and pulling paint around the canvas until figures and ideas emerge. As the painting progresses, these forms develop characteristics and evolve with the environments from which they spawn. The early stages of my painting are like a primordial soup, a petri dish for things to ferment, mutate and proliferate. The figures frequently have carnivalesque attributes, such as hybridity, metamorphosis, and the grotesque. The ongoing series Floating Downstream borrows its name from John Lennon’s lyrics describing the beginning of an acid trip in “Tomorrow Never Knows”.

Pareidolia is the tendency to see images in clouds or in the ink blots of a Rorschach test. I exploit this phenomenon in my stream-of-consciousness approach to painting, deciphering images in the loose, gestural mark-making of a work in its early stages. These embryonic images are built upon and in turn imply narrative directions. Beginning a painting without ideas can make the emerging imagery feel conjured. It is a journey inward and the images are things I encounter as I float downstream. Streams flow into other streams and gene pools coalesce from which new life forms evolve. A cross-pollination of images and figures emerges over different paintings; sometimes intentionally, and other times surfacing of their own accord. The figures change, to assume characteristics of their respective environments. Familiar objects can be seen in the paintings, but like in a dream, can feel unfamiliar in the context of the strange worlds they populate. Editing is a crucial part of my process. Each painting has its own evolutionary path: the strongest images and ideas survive and the weakest either adapt or get buried under paint, or are preyed upon. This Darwinian-like psychodrama plays out as creatures struggle to propagate their genes through acts of violence and procreation. ­­­

Some paintings mimic evolutionary processes from the real world. The layer a mollusk produces to protect itself becomes a pearl in Nacre Shuck. Dandelions (Erythrospermum) use wind to disperse their seeds and plants lustfully absorb water in Osmosis Garden and Osmosis Night Garden.

WORKS: 

Click on images for larger view

Mr Squiggle the Man from the Moon (2020)
Oil on canvas
72 x 56 in.

Toevine Dionysus (2020)
Oil on canvas
72 x 56 in.

Drain Circle (2020)
Oil on canvas
72 x 56 in.

Moon Paddle Dream Fishing (2020)
Oil on canvas
72 x 56 in.

Osmosis Garden (2020)
Oil on canvas
72 x 56 in.

Toe Painter (2020)
Oil on canvas
72 x 56 in.

Honeydew (2020)
Oil on canvas
72 x 56 in.

Electric Shuck (2020)
Oil on canvas
72 x 56 in.

Erythrospermum (2020)
Oil on canvas
72 x 56 in.

Floating Downstream Black and White Series (2021)
Acrylic on paper
(multiple) 14 x 11 in.