Melissa Dunn’s studio is in her house in Memphis, Tennessee, where she was born and has lived most of her life. She spent her early years immersed in the city’s music scene, splitting her time between playing with bands and making visual art. Although she still plays guitar and sings, today music is mostly an inward-facing part of her studio life, with an audience of sketchbooks, drawings, and paintings, which she refers to as her “highly energized objects.” She has dedicated the last twenty-five years to finding, translating, and honing evolving forms based both from the everyday and from science, history, and literature. In addition to her studio practice, Dunn has worked as a teaching artist to children and adults. In 2021 she was awarded a public art commission for the Memphis International Airport and in February of 2024 she’ll have a solo exhibition at Crosstown Arts in Memphis.
Artist Statement
I see the world through shapes. What attracts me is their ability to totally transform when they interact with color, marks, and composition. My drawings and paintings are the conversation between the shapes that live in my imagination and the shapes the world offers, where stream of consciousness and intention meet. I find subject matter in the daily drawings I do in my sketchbook. Within this bound private world I don’t think, judge, or analyze. Here I just draw.
As I begin to bridge sketchbook drawings to paintings, I shift gears from the improviser to the sleuth and problem solver. Once I’ve chosen a drawing to work with, I draw it repeatedly, experimenting with scale, manipulating its edges and searching for composition. This process gives me a plan to work with but also allows my muscle memory the chance to absorb the forms, while keeping the door open for spontaneity and experimentation.
Everything from poetry to science, movies, literature, music, dancing, art history and nature interweaves its way into my work. These references fuel my ‘research and development’ in the studio, supporting my visual interpretation of this blip in time that is my existence. I aspire to show up with an open mind and heart, which sometimes is as easy as breathing and sometimes is like swimming through molasses. Shapes can carry the weight of a lifetime, an experience, a passing thought, and sometimes even the empty space between thoughts.
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