FACE

Jackson-born artist Kaidi Dunstan captures the mysterious language of the human form. This exhibition brings together a world of faces and figures in Dunstan’s signature reduced language, described poetically by Dunstan in an artist’s statement as a “thicket of bafflement.” Fascinated by how face and body combine to communicate ever-fluid emotions, Dunstan’s objective in her drawings is to bring out how we relate to one another.

Kaidi Dunstan's work looks at the shifting language she finds in our bodies and selves. "We try to connect to other bodies in different ways, building bridges between us, some fleeting, others complex. I think of myself as a wanderer and this is the territory I investigate; it's here I find oddness and mystery." Drawing is always the touchstone and way into the work. She finds invigoration and adventure in making a drawing, much is happening because the process is so immediate. "Drawing as an activity is intense, challenging, frustrating, uncomfortable and one has to embrace confusion and uncertainty. It's a way of thinking and moving through a difficulty and that is its reward." Hands, arms, and faces become emphasized. Pairings, small groupings and making use of repetition are common threads. She often takes drawings apart and puts them together in a different way. A building up of surface and texture results from the process of putting down and taking away, erasing and redrawing, picking up bits that remain, and restating in a reduced way.

Concentrating on relationships within groups of figures, or of single figures to their backgrounds, Dunstan creates multi-layered, dynamic works. To achieve this, Dunstan often sketches a form onto a piece of tracing paper and then transfers it to paper or canvas. This process of layering creates movement within her compositions. Representing the struggle between the particular and the general, Dunstan’s arms, hands, and faces dance across the scene in fluid, inexplicable waves echoing the internal tension between these physical parts and the spirit inside.

Born in 1953 in Jackson, Wyoming, Kaidi Dunstan began drawing and creating objects from a young age. Raised amidst the sagebrush, her youth was a fruitful period left to her own devices with freedom to wander in the valley and woods, engaging with animals and insects. She developed a skillset building musical instruments and furniture at a young age, which led to further inquiry into the visual arts. Though she is largely self-taught, impassioned by art, Dunstan continued with her studies in Oregon, Colorado, and London, England, training in printmaking under Katherine Jones, R.A. at the Art Academy in London. She has had numerous solo exhibitions in Jackson and group shows in Seattle and Los Angeles. She was awarded the 2002 Visual Arts Fellowship from the Wyoming Arts Council. She presently lives and works in London, UK.

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FACE: KAIDI DUNSTAN

MAYA FRODEMAN GALLERY

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