2007 MFA Fine Art Thesis Exhibition

Natalie Aguilar
Bridget Barnhart
Lina Bokhary
Benjamin Carder
Iris Charabi-Berggren
Amanda Curreri
Anne Devine
Jennifer Durban
Frank Anthony Ebert
Patricia Esquivias
Heather Feeney
Renee Gertler
Kathryn Gritt
David Gurman
Jessalyn Haggenjos Barr
Amanda Herman
Marnia Johnston
Robin Johnston
Bessma Khalaf
Melanie C. Lacy Kusters
Sarah Marie Lewallen
Christopher Loomis
Samuel Lopes
Celia Manley
Jack Miller
Carrie Anne Minikel
Elizabeth Mooney
Nyeema Morgan
Harry Muniz
Alison Naschke-Messing
Jennifer O'Keeffe
Karen Olsen-Dunn
Katina Papson
Lee Pembleton
Ryan Pierce
Lacey Jane Roberts
Amy Rose Sampson
Erik Scollon
Marsha Shaw
Shawn Sloan
Reggie Stump
Gabrielle Teschner
Julie Ann Travis
Carly Troncale
Lindsey White
Tom Wiehl
Christine Wong Yap
Jenny Zito

Karen Olsen-Dunn  
The Paisley Hunt
43" x 89"
pigmented ink on canvas on aluminium
2007
 
Artist Statement
The explosive colors and decorative patterns in my work are intended to beautify ugliness and yet dangle on the edge of that which is not beautiful. For me the color is best when it is outrageously lurid, overindulgent, and oversaturated. The cinematic dimensions of these paintings unravel a simultaneity of events similar to the compression of time, space, and narrative depicted in renaissance tapestries. I respond to the humanism in the narratives of the renaissance works and so I’m imagining that the hunting and battle scenes of this era as predictors of the pattern of global disharmonies unfolding today. The weaving of the formal pattern in the image causes new patterns to emerge.  The domesticity and the triviality of the pattern mixed with the underlying violence of the narrative are intended to suggest that something sinister lurks here. Animals play a role, as observers of the cruelty or by virtue of patterns of training by their human masters, become active participants in that cruelty. The use of pixilated, low-resolution images combined with an interruption of pattern causes a type of fragmentation in the scenes suggesting instability and how our place in this world is tenuous at best.

Contact
kolsen_dunn@yahoo.com

©2007 California College of the Arts. All rights reserved.