Karen Gunderson seems to be such an extrovert it’s hard to see how she can bear the solitude required to be an artist. But she does, and the latest result is an exhibition called “Everything the Light Touches: Sixty Years of Karen Gunderson,” at Dallas’ Erin Cluley Gallery. Painting in her studio overlooking the Hudson River, in Coxsackie, N.Y., Gunderson currently concentrates on canvases devoted to shades of black. These are not monochromatic. They surge like waves that brighten as they catch the light, with brushstrokes applied “backwards,” she tells me, “against the grain of form.” Does she like living against the grain? I ask. Her quick reply: “Of course.”
Her black moon pictures have craters “laser-cut to my drawings,” she says. She is fascinated by string theory, an attempt to unify gravity with quantum physics. Gunderson has been a unifier through art ever since she left Racine, Wis., eventually moving to New York and associating with the heady company of Sol LeWitt and Elaine de Kooning. In time came her cloud paintings, and in them, as in the works in black, she wanted to “push it farther and farther; don’t go sideways.”
Continue reading for just $1
Get unlimited access to dallasnews.com for just $1 for 1 month
Already a subscriber?
Karen Gunderson seems to be such an extrovert it’s hard to see how she can bear the solitude required to be an artist. But she does, and the latest result is an exhibition called “Everything the Light Touches: Sixty Years of Karen Gunderson,” at Dallas’ Erin Cluley Gallery. Painting in her studio overlooking the Hudson River, in Coxsackie, N.Y., Gunderson currently concentrates on canvases devoted to shades of black. These are not monochromatic. They surge like waves that brighten as they catch the light, with brushstrokes applied “backwards,” she tells me, “against the grain of form.” Does she like living against the grain? I ask. Her quick reply: “Of course.”
Her black moon pictures have craters “laser-cut to my drawings,” she says. She is fascinated by string theory, an attempt to unify gravity with quantum physics. Gunderson has been a unifier through art ever since she left Racine, Wis., eventually moving to New York and associating with the heady company of Sol LeWitt and Elaine de Kooning. In time came her cloud paintings, and in them, as in the works in black, she wanted to “push it farther and farther; don’t go sideways.”
Details: Through May 4, 150 Manufacturing Street, Suite 210, Dallas. Open Wednesday through Saturday, 12-5 p.m.
