Let It Be Clear: The Art of Anne Dunn

114 pages, full color, 8.5 x 11 in. 

ISBN 978-1-927054-49-9 C$39.99 2021

 

Anne Dunn is an éminence grise of the British-Canadian art world. The daughter of Industrialist Sir James Dunn and his actress wife Irene Clarice Richards, Dunn came of age in post-war England where she attended the Chelsea School of Art, studying under Graham Sutherland and Henry Moore, then at the Anglo-French Art Centre in London with Fernand Léger. Later she attended the Académie Julien in Paris. In a career spanning sixty years, she has exhibited her work in major galleries in England, France, the US, and Canada. Her life and career intersect with luminaries of twentieth century art, including Lucien Freud and Francis Bacon. 

Alongside her glamorous British-European life, she has retained close ties to New Brunswick. Until recently she would return annually to her family cottage near Bathurst, where she has produced a great deal of her work. She has said that her favourite part of living in New Brunswick is “An active state of being. Magic as a possibility.” A versatile, meticulous painter, she works in both oil and watercolour. Her subject matter encompasses still life, figures, landscape, flowers, and interiors. 

Let It Be Clear: The Art of Anne Dunn includes over forty reproductions of Dunn’s works, photographs of her life, an in-depth interview conducted by St. Thomas University art students, and essays by an appropriately international set of art experts: Virgil Hammock, Richard Shone, Tanya Harrod, and Nathan Kernan.

“These somewhat mysterious drawings project an air that is both sensuous and ascetic.”  –John Ashbury, New York Magazine. 

“Attention is key – her deep attention to the motif as it is defined and transformed through the medium. There are no false notes or facile effects. Imagery is hard won, even or especially when it appears to arise out of fluid improvisation.” –Nathan Kernan