Melissa Dunn’s studio is in her house in Memphis, TN, where she was born and has lived most of her life. She spent her early years immersed in the city’s music scene, splitting her time between playing with bands and making visual art. Her abstract-based work is the landing pad where stream of consciousness and the world meet, telling stories that shapes and color carry, either over a lifetime or through a passing thought. She has exhibited her work extensively over the last twenty-five years and is a teaching artist with a focus on continuing art education for adults.

My paintings are based on drawings that climb to the top of my drawing pile, flutter around my studio in search of the landing pad that turns them into a whole other thing. They’re a record of the near miss, the possible crash, my place in the mix of life. I’m playing with chunkiness, warbling edges next to straight edges, empty space, fussiness, order, colors having their say, and how decisions layer up to questions and answers and then more questions. They’re conversations in my head and me without a head.