Capturing Bucks County

Every morning, Dot Bunn enters her studio and gets to work, still anxious after thirty years. "I don’t think of painting as a career, it is more of a calling," said Bunn. 

She has lived in Bucks County since she was 10 years old, and her style has developed through a routine of hard work and research. After a career in graphic design and printing, Bunn and her husband Tom retired from their commercial printing business 10 years ago so she could devote herself to being a studio painter, teacher, a lecturer at Delaware Valley College and a mother to three grown children.  Currently, she works at Red Stone Farm Studio in Plumstead Township.

“He is the guardian at the gate so that I do not get interrupted when I really need to concentrate,” said Bunn of her husband. "My artwork requires planning and concentration throughout the process and that requires isolation and a freedom from outside pressures."

Working strictly in oils, Bunn’s representational work includes still lifes, portraits, and the rural landscapes of Bucks County. While creating classically styled pieces, Bunn expresses a familiar feeling of wonder in her paintings. Bunn allows her media to project their inherent expressive qualities - it is apparent through the luminous quality of Bunn’s work that she has a strong background in color theory and the study of glazing. For example, just as the real atmosphere mutes color and blurs edges, her glazes capture these effects in painting. Bunn applies glazes to control the value and color of objects with the most subtle gradations.

There is something magical about Bunn’s careful observation of natural forms and atmospheric light and her deep understanding of composition. Her renderings create a delicate ambience which transform familiar subjects into animated and eloquent works.

Bunn explained: “Each painting captures a distinct time of day or season. I paint what I feel with the hope that it will connect with others on a personal level… Art is a form of communication, it is my hope that people will stand in front of my paintings and feel that if they could just step over the frame, they would be there. The sensation of the moment is important to me. I am less interested in a perfect likeness of the place,” said Bunn.

In Spring Rain, the beauty of the landscape is captured as much by the infinite variety of greens as by the technical proficiency of the rendering of the scene of trees near a stream.  The cool nuances of the greens keep the entire painting from feeling too yellow and warm. The painting captures the atmospheric effect of the rainy morning, and its unusual dimensions add depth and interest.

Baker at Tabora is a realist portrait and a masterful rendering of a baker practicing his craft. With a slight resemblance to the contemporary portraits of Lucian Freud, Bunn’s palette has jostling grays dividing vibrant yellow-pink and reddish-brown skin tones, while dark reds settle eerily in the deepest shadows of the baker’s face and hands. The artist’s confident brushstrokes place colors side by side, tangibly rendering volumes in an exotic update of old master techniques. 

Bunn is methodical in her technique and her approach to her art.  She has begun to apply the classic proportions known as the golden section or golden ratio to planning the compositional elements of her work.  This involves more deliberate designing of the visual space, in which the mathematically derived ratios, originally discovered by ancient Greek mathematicians and later broadly applied in the art of the Renaissance, reflect proportions found in nature and are meant to be aesthetically pleasing.

“There is something intangible that we all share when looking at a beautiful place or a particular person going about their daily work. If I can somehow capture that feeling in color and composition it will sound a universal chord in all those who have experienced similar moments in their travels,” said Bunn. “Almost any place has it’s time of exceptional beauty which could be a change of light or the seasonal turn of foliage. Being there at just the right time is the challenge.”

Although Bunn’s style is traditional, her process benefits greatly from digital photography and Photoshop. Shooting her subjects from as many angles as she can, Bunn then alters photographs on the computer by playing with the effects of color and lighting. She then draws the image on paper in order to establish a composition, which is later painted in monochromatic shades of gray on prepared Masonite panels. After establishing values, Bunn gradually builds up the depth of color by using a system of direct and indirect painting, glazing certain areas to develop the shadows while highlighting other parts of the work. Since each step requires drying time, Bunn typically works on several pieces at once, alternating sessions as each is ready.

“Good painting is complicated,” explained Bunn. “On the emotional level you want to capture a feeling or impression. On the technical side, you need to intelligently manage the mixing of color, the drawing of form and the composition of a three-dimensional form on a two-dimensional surface, while putting it all together in a way that will not self destruct because of poor painting practices.”

In addition to teaching traditional oil painting and color mixing from her studio and at the Art Colony in Stockton, New Jersey, Bunn has been working on her one-woman show, which will be on display at the Howard Gallery of Fine Art in New Hope from November 3rd through December 16th.

More of Bunn's work can be viewed at www.dotbunn.com and www.howard-gallery.com.

Shannon Collins is LifeStyle Magazine’s fine arts editor.