Opening reception: Friday, October 10, 5-7 PM | Artist talk with Patrick Dunfey and Esme Thompson: Friday, October 17, 5:30-7:00 PM
Patrick Dunfey | New Paintings | Clifford B. West Gallery
Exhibition Statement | The paintings in this exhibition were created over the past year on heavy watercolor paper using pure pigments mixed with white and black gesso. While the artist draws on recognizable forms, their use of scale, compressed space, flattened perspective, and distorted geometry removes the sense of the objects being simple representations of something observed. Instead, the works evoke memories or imagination. Although specific references may be hard to identify, the intention is for the paintings to engage the viewer, as if they are fixed in the mind of someone for whom the subject holds particular significance. The relationship between the subjects and their titles aims for the paintings to communicate meaning on their own. As the novelist Walter Abish remarked about his writing, “My work invites interpretation. To provide explanations is to inhibit the reader’s interaction. Often to explain is to explain away.”
Biography | Patrick Dunfey (b. 1957, Exeter, New Hampshire), BFA, Rhode Island School of Design,1981. His work is in the permanent collections of the Ackland Museum of Art, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, NC; Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick, ME; Currier Museum of Art, Manchester, NH; Luria Library, Santa Barbara City College, Santa Barbara, CA; and Weisman Art Museum, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN. Recent group exhibitions include TRIAD/2020: Paintings by Patrick Dunfey, Pam Glick, and Richard Jacobs at Bundy Modern, Waitsfield, VT (2020), Peace, Love, and Harmony: 1960s Vermont at Bennington Museum in Bennington, VT (2019), Turn of Thought at Edward Thorp Gallery in New York City (2017), Made in Vermont at Hall Art Foundation in Reading, VT (2017), and Enrico Riley/Patrick Dunfey at 225 Gallery, White River Junction, VT (2016). Recent solo exhibitions of his work have been held at 225 Gallery, White River Junction, VT (2019), Lyceum Gallery, The Derryfield School in Manchester, NH (2018), Nearburg Gallery, Black Family Visual Arts Center, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH (2017), and White River Gallery @ BALE in South Royalton, VT (2017). Patrick Dunfey’s first exhibition at AVA Gallery was in 1987 with Amy Wrapp and Martha Boyajian.
Artist Statement | Patrick Dunfey’s images exist in a space between representation and memory. For the past forty years, his work has explored an imagined landscape filled with familiar objects. These settings are shaped by nature and influenced by human activity, featuring elements like trees, logs, planks, riverbanks, lakes, stone, iron, rope, and tools. The objects and surrounding landscapes often appear denatured and flattened. Foreground and background compete for space on the surface, while light and shadow interact in ways that challenge traditional pictorial logic, often creating a sense of dissonance.
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