LEBANON — A viewer could easily assume that the pieces in Patrick Dunfey’s current exhibit “New Paintings” at AVA Gallery and Art Center were depicting details from the Upper Valley landscape.
But Dunfey doesn’t call himself a landscape painter; all of his subject matter originates from his imagination, explored first through small “thumbnail” drawings, then painted onto wide pieces of paper that have gotten smaller since he left his White River Junction studio in late 2019.
“When I paint a lake, it could be a lake anywhere. I would say it’s always my imagination,” Dunfey, of Hanover, said in a recent interview. It’s an unexpected approach for an artist who hails from Exeter, N.H. and who has spent most of his adult life in the Upper Valley, where opportunities for painting en plein air abound.
“New Paintings” marks Dunfey’s first solo show since 2019, when he displayed at 225 Gallery, his former studio in the Tip Top Media Building in White River Junction. In many ways, the exhibit builds on that show from six years ago by hearkening back to the kind of compressed outdoor scenes Dunfey, 68, began producing in 1984, the year before he and his wife moved to the Upper Valley from New York. These new works share similar subject matter and composition, but Dunfey’s focus is tighter now, more honed.
“To be able to come to something brand new and yet have it be a known place is part of what’s made this period of work really enjoyable,” said Dunfey, who retired in 2020 following 17 years at the Hood Museum of Art, where he was head of exhibitions design and planning.
Years ago, Dunfey started laying pieces of linen on a tabletop to paint, instead of tacking them to the wall. In doing so, the framing of his subject matter grew smaller.
When he eventually started painting at the wall again, additional elements in his work had been stripped away. He painted a single stump, instead of a grove of trees, for example.
The paintings at AVA zero in on similar details such as a section of rust-red ladder in “The Hayloft” or the crisscrossing of logs in a patch of grass in “Lot.”
These days, paper is an important ingredient in Dunfey’s paintings as it helps preserve the sense of flatness created through drawing, a quality he’s always seeking.
“A painting or a drawing begins to feel resolved to me when there’s a certain compression,” he said. “When I feel like everything’s sort of pressing forward onto the surface.”
Some of the pieces in “New Paintings” such as “Lot,” or “Campfire,” where a half-moon of stones is lit up by a wash of yellow pigment, call to mind comic book panels, or woodblock prints, so devoid they are of any sense of depth.
Many of the pieces also feel like they’re missing a light source, another clue that they originate from Dunfey’s own imagination. To achieve the opaque appearance, Dunfey mixed pure pigment with white gesso – a canvas primer – while black gesso was used to create dark outlines.
A songwriter as well as a visual artist, Dunfey finds that painting and making music draw from the same made-up world.
“When I’m painting, when I’m looking at a painting or a drawing, there’s a music to it,” he said.
For years, he’s also taken photographs, and while they’ve never directly led to a painting, sometimes the texture of a rusty piece of metal or the cast of light finds its way into a new piece.
When I first saw the pieces at AVA, before interviewing Dunfey, they struck me as a version of landscape painting that skipped the sentimentality that seems endemic to the genre. There were no spotless red barns or shimmering cow pastures in Dunfey’s paintings, instead, the opaque hues and black outlines felt almost ominous, and the compressed perspective made the pieces appear graphic, modern.
Even if Dunfey’s landscapes are all in his head, what rings true about them is a sense of harmony among the paintings’ elements and their relationship to one another. It’s a feeling that Dunfey described as “everything holding together.”
“Why that works and why that doesn’t is what keeps me painting all these years,” he said.
Patrick Dunfey’s exhibit “New Paintings” is on view at AVA Gallery and Art Center in Lebanon through Nov. 15. The exhibit is free and open to the public. To learn more, visit avagallery.org.
Halloween!
The Wilder Club and Library will be hosting “fiddle ninja” Jakob Breitbach’s group The Karaoke Bandstand for a family-friendly evening of live karaoke from 5 to 7 p.m. on Friday. The Box Food Truck will be serving up Mexican eats for hungry patrons. For more information, visit the library’s Facebook page: facebook.com/QWLibraries.
Later that night, the group will be playing in a 21+ version of the event at the Filling Station in White River Junction, starting at 9 p.m. Entry is free, and costumes are encouraged.
The following day, the bar will host another party at 7 p.m. with a costume contest at 10 p.m. as part of Gory Daze, Main Street Museum’s annual Halloween extravaganza, which includes a costume parade through the village’s main drag and ends with a dance party at Briggs Opera House at 9 p.m. To learn more about the Filling Station’s events, visit their Instagram page @thefillingstationwrj. To learn about Gory Daze, go to mainstreetmuseum.org.
The party continues on Friday at Sawtooth Kitchen, Bar and Stage on Allen Street in Hanover where DJ Benny Shreds will be playing Halloween hits at 9:30 p.m. The 21 + event is $5 at the door, or free if you wear a costume. Visit sawtoothkitchen.com to learn more.
At the same time, one town away, in Lebanon, Upper Valley rock band The Conniption Fits will perform in a Party from Hell at Salt hill Pub at 9 p.m. The event is 21+ and admission is $10 at the door. Costumes are required. For more information, visit salthillpub.com.
Thirty minutes north, Babes Bar in Bethel is hosting a dance party and costume contest with cash prizes on Friday at 8 p.m. Expect spooky drinks and DJ sets from Kell Arbor and Center for Cartoon Studies alum, Wayne Carter. To learn more, visit Babes’ Instagram page @babesvt.
