Anne Dunn

Anne Dunn was born in London. The artist spent her childhood and received her early education in Canada and England. Anne began her art studies at the Chelsea School of Art under Graham Sutherland and Henry Moore, continuing at the Anglo-French Art Centre in London with Fernand Léger and the Academie Julien in Paris. Anne had her first solo exhibition in London in 1957 and has had many successful solo and group exhibitions in London, Paris and New York, accompanied by consistently favourable reviews in Art in America, Burlington Magazine, Art World and the New York Times. Her work is included in prestigious collections in Europe and North America. In New Brunswick, her work is included in the collections of the Beaverbrook Art Gallery, the Provincial Art Bank, the University of New Brunswick and the Harriet Irving Library.

Over forty years ago, Anne had her first exhibition at Gallery 78. Happily for us, Anne returns annually to northern New Brunswick, the land she has visited since childhood. It is home that matters the most to Anne. And this means New Brunswick. “It ties up with the fact of wanting to be part of something one has come out of” explains Anne, “this is the definition of home in the true sense."

The subject of New Brunswick landscape represents the familiar images of Anne Dunn's paintings. However, the gestural brush or pen and pencil markings and washes of colors are less concerned with the details of representation than with an orchestration of airy atmospheric effects and sensuous responses that take the form of droopy tangled webs and scattered jottings. Forces and forms of life and death intermingle in the vegetation of her forests and flowers, backlit with an eerie acidic palette or simply strung on lines and shapes on white paper.

On Anne Dunn

"Anne Dunn is one of the most tenacious draftsmen around, and as she knows what to put in or leave out, we end up knowing that chill clear neck of the woods as well as if we lived there ourselves." -John Russel, The New York Times, May 18, 1979

"(...) These somewhat mysterious drawings project an air that is both sensuous and ascetic." -John Ashbery, New York Magazine, May 21, 1979

"(...) for Anne Dunn drawing is a satisfying expression of itself. She relies on simplicity to imply the complexities of things." -John Bernard Myers, Art World, New York, May 1982

"A true painter is on hand here, and one who could trust herself to work with emptiness." -John Russel, The New York Times, November 15, 1985

"Dunn's work comes as a gift to an art world beleaguered by trash. It is not precious, but it is extremely valuable, in its summation of things the way they were, are and still can be - if only the right artist sets her sights on them." -Gerrit Henry, Art in America, March 1986