JESSICA DUNEGAN
Healing Through Nature
Art can be therapeutic to not only those who look at it, but to the artists who have an intimate connection to the process. This past year, while living in Boston, Jessica Dunegan experienced an emotional shift that changed the course of her artistic journey. Recognized for years as a figurative painter specializing in the self-portrait, the mixed media artist has now turned to nature.
Dunegan, who recently moved to California, found solace in the outdoors during her time in the New England city, which naturally transitioned her artwork to tranquil landscapes that incorporate the sky, land and water. Approximately two dozen of the works, which are from her Healing Through Nature series, will be on view in the artist’s first solo exhibition at Walter Wickiser Gallery in New York City. The paintings can be divided into four categories—clouds, cosmos, water and abstract— that correspond one-to-one with the four elements of air, fire, water and earth, respectively.
Being a mixed media artist, Dunegan’s materials are important to her work. For the new series she builds multiple resin layers—mixed with acrylic paint, ink and pigment—on aluminum and holographic vinyl. This allows for reflective surfaces as well as depth, which has been a hallmark of her work, past and present. “That is something that is universal in my work,” she says,
“and the jumping off point.”
In her pieces of clouds and water, the depth is particularly noticeable. “Some of the clouds are literally in front of the other clouds, so there’s a depth, and that repeats in the water,” she explains.
Another aspect of the natural world that plays an important role in Dunegan’s paintings is light, which becomes almost a material used in the compositions as it affects the work. “When you move, because the aluminum or holographic is exposed, the color comes through, but it changes from blue to yellow to green,” she describes. And further explains, “Whatever spotlight hits it, it creates a rainbow effect. It isn’t painted in there, it’s just the light reflecting off the background…The works will never be the same when you look at them, it depends on the light and where you’re standing.”