a woman | an island | the moon
February 26 – March 23, 2019
Blue moon, oil on paper on panel, 46” diameter, 2018
Islands are simultaneously protected and isolated by the waters that surround them. These tondos are like miniature islands that encompass the life of Teresa Dunn’s female protagonist and her small world. The circle, saturated color, and pattern are metaphors for isolation and belonging, boundaries and openness, hope and hopelessness, home and homeland. We see these constructed environments painted from numerous points of reference including the protagonist, her cohabitants, an omniscient voyeur, and the viewer. Dunn’s narratives occupy a space that is at the same time somewhere and nowhere. Her paintings are a combination of fictive futures, imagined alternate realities, and dream-like perversions of past events. “What Dunn does so masterfully with…her recent series—is to invite her viewers to share the universal poetry of her paintings without divulging or insisting on any particulars. To do so would dampen their magic…” —John Seed, art historian and independent curator
“a woman | an island | the moon” in First Street Gallery’s main exhibition space is Teresa Dunn’s fourth solo exhibition at the venue. Exhibited alongside Dunn’s paintings are poems written for the show by five contemporary Italian women poets. In the rear gallery, Teresa Dunn and Italian artist Valeria Cozzarini feature a collaborative installation “Nulla Piena/Full and Void.” They explore the physical and psychological gap left by relationships of those geographically separated. Through the journey, absurdity, doubt, and memory Dunn and Cozzarini delve into imagery and experiences that concurrently seem full and empty, are visible and invisible, and embody something and nothing.
Teresa Dunn is a three-time recipient of the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Fellowship. She exhibits widely with upcoming shows at the Maine Museum of Art in Bangor and the Pendleton Center for the Arts in Oregon. Visit Dunn’s website for more artwork and complete bio: www.teresadunnpaintings.com.
