Teresa Dunn
Artist's Website
@teresa.m.dunn
Teresa Dunn is a Mexican American artist raised in rural Southern Illinois. Her identity, life, and art are influenced by her racial and cultural heritages and the complexities of being a brown woman in the Midwest.
Teresa Dunn received her MFA from Indiana University Bloomington in 2002. She is a three-time recipient of the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Fellowship and received the Jacob K Javits Fellowship from the US Department of Education.
Dunn is affiliated with First Street Gallery (New York) and Galerie l’Échaudé (Paris). Upcoming solo exhibitions venues include First Street Gallery (2022) and the Dennos Museum (2023 Michigan). Recent solo shows include Longing to Be at the University of Alabama Huntsville (2021) and the Pendleton Center for the Arts (Oregon 2021); and Cover the Waterfront at the Zillman Art Museum (Maine 2020) which was reviewed in Art New England. Recent group exhibitions include at The Painting Center in New York (2022), Disrupted Realism featuring Anne Harris, juried by John Seed, at the Buckham Gallery (Michigan 2020) for which she was awarded second prize. Dunn’s solo exhibition Étrange réalité at Galerie l’Échaudé (Paris 2012) was reviewed in French journals AZART and Miroir de l’Art. Dunn won Best in Show at the 2008 Biennial of Contemporary Realism at the Fort Wayne Museum of Art. Other notable achievements include inclusion in the inaugural Miami University Young Painters Competition (2000). She was invited by All SHE Makes to be the featured cover artist in the inaugural print publication with an interview by Teri Henderson. Other publications include Friend of the Artist Magazine, Pikchur Magazine, Studio Visits, and Paint Pulse Magazine. Dunn attended the Vermont Studio Center and Cuttyhunk Island Artist Residencies. She has conducted many artist lectures including at the University of Washington Seattle and the Rome Art Program in Rome, Italy.
Dunn’s work is included in collections including the Zillman Art Museum, Kinsey Institute, Venice Baroque Orchestra, and Wright State University Art Galleries. Dunn’s essay on being an artist-mother will be published in the anthology “An Artist and a Mother” by Demeter Press(2023). Teresa Dunn lives and works in East Lansing where she is an Associate Professor of Painting and Drawing at Michigan State University since 2006.
Longing to Be
Islands are simultaneously protected and isolated by the waters that surround them. These circular paintings are like miniature islands that encompass the life of my characters and their small world. Combined with the symbolism of the circle, cycles, and circular forms, I use saturated color and pattern to explore isolation and belonging, boundaries and openness, hope and hopelessness, home and homeland. Water, the moons, tables, food, boats, and bikes in these contained and constructed worlds become metaphors for physical and psychological journeys. This speculative reality is observed from numerous points of reference including the protagonists, their cohabitants, an omniscient voyeur, and the viewer.