Christopher Dunne, artist and tutor of realism

Christopher Dunne, artist.


MUSIC & ART	ABOUT THE ARTIST	AQUISITION & LINKS

This rather lengthy single page concerns personal information about the artist. The images are compressed and should load quickly. There is also an optional .mpg files with audio you may download. Please wait for all the images to appear if the server is running slow, and "refresh" if all pictures do not appear. Information about purchasing works is on the ACQUISITION & LINKS page.

Getting a glimpse of 'the personality behind the art' can add a daub of color to the overall experience of viewing an artist's work. This page of personal information is presented for your casual perusal-- items you may have discovered in person if you were to meet and engage the artist in conversation at a 'brick and mortar' gallery.

Personal pictures and commentary from Dunne the Sea Chanteyman and the "Dutch Master" painter:

"I was always a moody kid, unapologetically drawn to the darkness rather than light. Not that 'darkness' is anything necessarily negative, it is simply the contrast alternative to 'lightness'. That philosophy still infuses dramatic tension into my creative work. As a kid, I never had any real appreciation for the aesthetic conventions of traditional artistic expression... subject matter of mundane still life, pastoral settings, flora and fauna, etcetera, ad nauseum..."

"In other words, I found the typical popular depiction of conventional beauty in most visual art subject matter rather boring."

Above: Young Christopher contemplates the textile design of a beach blanket.

Above: A later "baby picture"... Dunne as a teenager. He honed his painting skills primarily by directly studying the works of "Dutch Master" painters on exhibit at museums such as The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.

Above: Dunne in his profligate twenties, rarely seen in the daylight.

Above: "The Elephant Man", a full-body theatrical costume effect created by Christopher Dunne, for an adaptation of the live drama he produced and directed.

Below: Other sideshow exhibit props from THE ELEPHANT MAN.

"Some people have asked why the props in this section appear to be lacking in color. Color was added in changing lighting effects, requiring these particular creations to be pale in hue under normal lighting conditions."

Props & Effects...

Below: Two identical ventriloquist figures designed and fabricated by Dunne, featuring jittery eyes, old fashioned slot-jaw mouth movement and the ability to exhale cigarette smoke through the nostrils. Made of laminates of various unique materials and rigged with steel cables, they could survive an extraordinary beating (if they had to).

Above: Dunne's first animatronic prop, a voodoo witch doctor head. For a short .mpg file download (304k), click on the picture.

Below: A recent animatronic robot creation.

From Art to Theatre and Back to Art

"An eye injury necessitated a shift in career path to other commercially oriented art endeavors, including set and theatrical lighting design-- and ultimately acting, directing and producing live theatre, independent film and video."

Above: Dunne in life-size puppet form as "the ghost of Banquo" in Shakespeare's MACBETH.

Above: The profile of Christopher Dunne in his thirties. For relaxation, Dunne began performing his own arrangements of 19th century "sea chanties", accompanying himself on electric guitar. He also plays the theremin. Really.

Skeletons in the Artistic Closet...

"in the early eighties, I did a series of small watercolor paintings for a collectible stamp distributor. I'm not ashamed of any of the goofy, rushed and sloppy commercial stuff I did in that period... in fact, it is actually fun today to reflect on the peculiar spin I put on those pictures. Pardon my bluntness, but considering my mentality at the time, I was most certainly drunk and rolling in and out of the sack with different women when each of the following assignments were actually painted."

Honey Bee: "A watercolor that gave me the willies."

Submarine Inventor: "I can't recall this guy's name, and it is his eternal misfortune that nearly nobody else can either."

Ned Hanlan: "This guy was a famous Canadian rower. I softened the background with an airbrush, and I painted him in acrylic washes."

WWII Fighters: "The original background was a cloudy sky, but the client wanted something 'more dramatic', so I changed the background to indicate a lower altitude. Why that made any difference I'll never know."

Edna St. Vincent Millay: "The watercolor of this poet was oddly memorable because I knocked it out while dealing with a suicide attempt of a former girlfriend who had just had a bad one night stand with fading pop teen idol Andy Gibb."

Nautilus Under Ice: "An acrylic that I enjoyed composing for its extreme setting and stark elements."

Unlikely Moment: "One of the worst paintings I've ever done, because the assignment involved hackneyed stereotypes and what was, at the time, a preposterous situation. The monk-ish guy on the right is not even fully rendered, just daubed in with my pinky finger."

Inspirations

"In order to develop sufficient skill to communicate a desired visual message, most painters study with (or in my case, primarily study the art of) other painters."

Jan Vermeer

"I studied Vermeer's work by spending endless hours analyzing this greatest of great painter's original oils. He died too young, sadly under great stress and hopelessly in debt."

The Astronomer by Jan Vermeer

Thanks for visiting!