Ian Dunn

By Lu Orza from"Portrait of the Artist" Richmond House, book due April 2010

Logic and emotion are the two elemental forces of Ian Dunn’s work, expressed through geometry and colour.

The principle of the ‘golden ratio’ is at the heart of all composition. Dunn’s work aims to strip back the figure work to show the classical forms that lie behind it: the five Platonic solids; Pythagoras’s ‘golden rectangle’. These are the precise, cold edges of reason, yet there is restfulness in their symmetry; the shapes elicit responses of calm, and a sense of harmony. Dunn believes these forms speak a universal language connecting humanity with everything around us. The golden ratio, he says, ‘gives us our scale on this planet.’

In contrast, colours ‘have an emotional value.’ But they are also informative. ‘Colour tells us the distance of the stars… I think that really it’s the colour that defines the geometry of the picture.’

The intense colours of Dunn’s painting can be disturbing, yet his penchant for stripping back is apparent here as well in his preference for primary colours. ‘I completed [one] picture in green and it was an utter disaster. It’s not a pure colour.’ Dunn reworked the painting in blue. And colours react against each other; ‘green against red will jump.’ ‘It’s not that I want to disturb…’ says Dunn, but doesn’t finish the sentence.

Not surprisingly, the process of elaborating his work is equally polarised. ‘I may be in absolute control of the form in the picture but I’m not in control of the colour – I have a rough idea of what I’m going to do and then the colour takes over.’ Once the precision draughtsmanship of the form has been completed, Dunn pulls back. He leaves the studio, does the washing up, goes for a walk. Nature is an important source, and one that drew him to explore the golden ratio in greater depth. ‘You look at nature, you might walk through a field and see everything going on naturally and you think it’s all chaotic but in fact it isn’t.’ The natural world is full of reductions of the golden ratio.

As the picture comes there is a loss of control during the initial colour process, but later on in the painting he regains it. ‘The picture comes back to me on its own terms and dictates to me where I should be going with the colour.’ Working with acrylics, Dunn has to move pretty fast as the paint dries quickly. ‘To get colour effects I’ll put thinner layers of colour – I put it on and wipe it off – straight out of the tube. No mixing – I never use a palette to mix – only as a vehicle between the tube and the surface. I’ll mix it on the surface.’ How does he know when a painting is finished? It’s a precarious moment. ‘I think the picture tells me. There comes a point when something says to you that’s enough don’t touch it any more if you go any further you’ve lost the picture.’

The tension between reason and emotion, precision and chaos, control and loss of- that appear in the process and the product of Dunn’s work seem to resonate throughout his relationship with painting as well. He has been doing it for as long as he can remember, but for years he both tried to sidestep it at the same time as being repeatedly drawn back to it at the cost of several other possible careers, including picture technician at the Tate Gallery in London and publican. At times he has felt that ‘art has been the bane of my life – it’s got in the way of any career that I might have built.’

At other times, though, it has been art that has kept him going. ‘I used to drink a lot – drink to paint, paint to drink. My whole life was chaos except when I was painting – that was my one thing that kept me sane – in the end I stopped drinking and started painting in earnest.’ Now, he says, ‘I paint to paint.’ He still has periods of time when he doesn’t paint for one reason or another. ‘It makes me a not very nice person to be around.’

In the classic geometry he seems to have found his own peace, reconciled himself finally to his work. ‘There was a point when I thought of changing my direction altogether and doing something completely different … but I’m not finished with this yet – it appears that this won’t allow me to move away from it.’

Ian Dunn works at St Michael's Studios, Bridport, Dorset, UK.