Benjamin Dunn
Work Samples with Statement
2025 Hodder Fellowship Application
These works demonstrate an extended inquiry into painting as a means to consider the experience of time within constructed spaces. The shaped surfaces echo arches, openings, and thresholds: portals. Some include wooden shelves where dry pigments rest as an offering of raw material. I use fields of color across the canvases to create simple illusions of space, offering entry. Surfaces in each painting shift with the movement of the viewer; scattering, absorbing, and blocking light akin to the larger environmental experience.
Recently, I prioritize economy. Fewer colors engage simpler forms in my current practice. Below these examples, I include works from 2016 which show a cursory use of embedded lighting. My proposal is to extend this use of lighting with my current understanding of additive and subtractive color environments, evolved painting skills, and embedded and environmental lighting to produce the works described in the project proposal.
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