Teresa Dunn’s second solo exhibition at First Street Gallery explores narrative worlds where the figures in her paintings confront points of no return. Color shift, texture, and complexity bend time and space as storytelling lingers in moments that approach yet hesitate to reach the event horizon. Precarious situations test if the tipping point is beneficial or detrimental. Tightrope walkers, burning boats, exposed flesh, and rising waters urge Dunn’s characters to challenge each other and examine their own motives. The paintings depict singular events from varied perspectives as ambiguity emerges about what has just occurred or what is about to happen. The people in Dunn’s works rely on their wits and question others’ intentions to make sense of incongruous landscapes. Mothers and fathers, children and animals, friends and strangers interact in tightly woven communities where intimacy and incompatibility collide. Teresa Dunn is a three time recipient of the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Fellowship and a 2000-2002 Jacob K. Javits Fellow. She is also represented by Hooks-Epstein Galleries in Houston, Texas and Galerie l’Echaude in Paris, France. Her 2011 Paris exhibition was reviewed in French art journals AZART and Miroir de l’Art. Dunn received her MFA from Indiana University in 2002. Teresa Dunn lives and paints in East Lansing, Michigan and is an Associate Professor of Painting at Michigan State University. -http://www.firststreetgallery.net |