When Geri Dunn was in 4th grade, some teachers may have pegged her as a doodler. At a recent art festival, a grade-school English teacher recognized her, smiled at her work and asked, “So you weren’t paying attention in my classes, huh?” “Nope,” admitted Dunn, flashing a smile back. She was honing her craft, she told him bashfully.
At 9 years old, Dunn, now 42, began following her lifelong passion for pencil drawing. The year was 1976, when Dunn’s family moved from Redondo Beach to Santa Ynez.
Dunn instantly fell in love with the area’s horses, cattle ranches and oak-studded rolling hills, and began using them as the subjects for what would become the bulk of her drawings. She draws with graphite pencils in the style of realism – which means you won’t find strange or whimsical characteristics in her work.
“I give life to my subjects using shadow and texture,” she explains, pointing to a portrait of a horse so meticulously drawn that one is tempted to touch the contours of the animal’s snout. She opts for graphite pencils over alternatives, such as charcoal, because, she explained, it shades well and isn’t as messy. Drawing is Dunn’s sole means of artistic expression. She tried her hand at painting, but described it as an “uncomfortable experience.” But sometimes she tries to emphasize color in her drawings without using paint.
She recently conveyed the pink on a horse’s nose, and was pleased to see how it came out. She shrugged when pressed on how she managed to evoke color in pencil. “It’s kind of a mystery, even to me. The hardest part of what I do is to develop a texture so people can see it,” she said. “It’s like Ansel Adams’s work. He produced black-and-white photography that could call color to mind.”
Although her current focus is landscapes and horses, Dunn’s first drawings were of faces. She wasn’t all that impressed with her first rendition of Elvis. But that didn’t stop her from trying to get it on display at a local coffee shop.
“The owner saw my first one, which was a rough sketch, and offered to buy it,” she recalled. “I insisted that she show it, but I ended up selling it.” Dunn returned twice with newer Elvis drawings, and, just like the first time, she was met with a persistent request to buy it. “Needless to say, I stopped drawing Elvis,” Dunn said, with a laugh.
While she never got to hang her drawing of The King in the coffee shop, she did get a boost of confidence that would mark a cross-over into a dedicated pursuit. That’s not to say she hasn’t suffered setbacks. Although Dunn has excelled in art since she was young, she hid her talent from others for a long time. “I just shied away from that type of attention,” she said.
She did not take art classes in high school, because she thought art students were druggies – a perception she admits was “silly.” Her father was adamantly opposed to the idea of pursuing art as a profession. When Dunn was offered a full scholarship to study at the Art Institute of Seattle, he objected to her going.
“He had no concept of what he wanted of me other than to not become an artist,” she recalled, admitting that she feared disappointing her father. “I didn’t want him to think of me as an artsy-fartsy kind of girl,” she lamented. It was a double-edged sword: let down your father or cancel your dreams. She chose the latter.
“I came from a family of four brothers and a sister,” she explained. “It was a difficult choice, but it wasn’t. It was one of those decisions where family came first. Still, it was a decision that haunted me.”
Today, she doesn’t look back with regret. “I’ve always tried to be positive about it,” she said. “If I had gone to Seattle, would I have met my husband, Mark. He’s my best friend. He’s the road crew. He’d cheer me up when I didn’t get into an art fair. He’s so everything for me that it’s kind of like, the artist is a supplement to my life.”
It was her husband who encouraged Dunn, in 1998, to resume drawing after a decade-long dry spell. “He asked me to draw a picture of John Wayne,” she recalled. “I didn’t have his picture, but I found a copy of People magazine with Tom Cruise on the cover. I began sketching. I forgot how much I loved doing it.”
When Dunn resumed drawing, she had to both overcome a little creative block, and balance it with her job as a health and safety coordinator at Dallas Love Field airport. Later, she worked as an office manager for a personal court reporting agency. This past August she was laid off, but the timing coincided with the end of her five-year plan to become a full-time artist.
“I lost the comfort of that regular paycheck, and had to face an unknown,” she said. “I thought I wasn’t ready for it, but then I realized I would never be.” Dunn said she never moved from Santa Ynez because it provides her with a steady supply of material to draw upon. “My art is influenced by the cowboy, cattle ranch history of the Valley,” she said. “It all represents integrity and simplicity, and I try to reflect that.”
She drives all over the Valley to find subjects for her drawings, often by happenstance while running an errand. “The other day I ran by a ranch that had four or five mares with babies out,” she said. “It’s just a matter of opening up your eyes.” Until recently, Dunn worked out of a small corner in her bedroom, but recently moved her drawing supplies to a small art studio. The space, formally a green house, was offered by a rancher friend.
She said the studio offers both a working environment and a gallery where she can show her drawings. Since she’s been off the payroll, she’s had more time to draw and promote her work.
Dunn is currently involved with the San Benito Arts Council, Santa Ynez Valley Artists Guild, the American Plains Artist Society and Women Artists of the West, and has work displayed in nine galleries and featured at 24 art festivals. Her creations can also be found at Murphy’s Home Furnishings and Sunrise Coffee House in Buellton.
She recently began doing commissions (which account for 20 percent of her work), and her diligence has paid off in spades. “Given the economy, I’m doing pretty well,” she noted. A drawing can take anywhere from 20 hours to 70 to complete. “Some just seem to fall on the paper,” she said. “You become so excited, your hand buzzes.”
Other times, she needs to take a break from a piece – sometimes for two weeks – so she can return to it with a fresh perspective and knead out the knots and kinks. These days, Dunn has a new five-year plan. Besides marketing her own work (which she admits requires overcoming a bit of timidity), she wants to help foster art appreciation throughout the Valley. She and some members of the Santa Ynez Artist Guild are in the process of forming a committee that will promote such outreach, primarily through fairs and festivals.
The idea came from Michelle de Werd, who helped form the Santa Ynez Valley Union High School Academic Booster Club to bring back the school’s music program this year. That group managed to raise a substantial chunk of change at an art fair in Los Olivos, and Dunn and Werd hope to build the same kind of momentum for the art community.
“This is especially important when so many galleries are struggling to stay open,” Dunn said. “If you don’t do something, then the art will be lost completely. There will be no outlet for the artist.” On May 8, the artists plan to put on an art show in Los Olivos at three different locations: Lavinia Campbell Park, the Grange Hall, and Saarloos and Sons Park.
“We want to emphasize that the town is still an artists’ community,” Dunn stated. “People may think because the Judith Hale Gallery is gone, there’s no art anymore. But that’s not the case at all.” Dunn said exposing people to art is good not only for the artists, but also for those who have untapped and unrecognized talent. Although raw talent and an urge to create helped propel her back into drawing, she recognizes that were it not for her husband, she may never have gotten back into creative mode.
“Some people are good at something, but they may need that nudge,” she said. “Following your dreams can be a lot of hard work and sacrifice, as I’ve come to find out, but if you never attempt it, you’ll never know where you may have ended up.” To find out more about Geri Dunn, visit http://geridunn.com.