Judith Dunbar
Judith Dunbar embraces the idea that “involvement in art is never ending.” She has shed the more traditional genres of her past to experience a more abstract and intuitive direction. She explores oils, acrylics and mixed media with great enthusiasm and is in constant drive and desire to experiment with art’s limitless boundaries. She admittedly loves the way that paint builds on a canvas and she has a magnetic attraction to the use of color and form. Her paintings are not about representation, but about essence. Judith Dunbar’s art, while being representational is without form creating a visual world where reality is mixed with images from her memory and fantasy.
Judith continues a long-standing theme of painting skewed memories and blurred perspectives. There is always a struggle between the ambiguous and the recognizable yet each painting is tied to the present moment in the viewers feeling of “knowing that place”. Judith’s professional life is spent working as a registered nurse caring for the critically ill. In order to “decompress” from her medical life, Judith began a small interior design business. It was through this business that she began developing multiple skills as a proficient faux finishing artist. Judith studied under many of the contemporary masters of the faux finishing trade and acquired a unique ability to meld both traditional methods and contemporary methods within her work. The combination of skills and her interest in fine art soon guided Judith into her own artistic direction.
In 1999 Judith took on a management role to support and care for the unexpected career of her then 13 yr old daughter. In a strange twist of fate, Judith’s eldest daughter Amanda Dunbar began suddenly painting at a remarkably masterful level while still in middle school. Her phenomenal overnight success required careful thought and guidance. Charged with the responsibility of protecting a very young artistic prodigy, Judith put her own artistic career goals aside. With Amanda’s coming of age, and education and career secured, Amanda encouraged her mother to return to her art and revisit a passion that had been quieted for several years.
