“I don't’ pretend to understand it -- I’m just a slave to it.”
- William Dunlap, November 22, 1995

Narrative is tricky business. Yet the telling of universal stories through art can bind us together and bring new, enhanced areas of self-understanding. William Dunlap’s assemblages of elements taken from his life, our lives, and the world around us reflect his sensuous and infectiously energetic view of life. He shares his feelings with us openly, dangerously and naively, perhaps.

Nostalgia in our speeding world is tough to sell. Our culture today seems about what is new and changing. Agents of change discard history to facilitate their rush to the future, dumping all “baggage.” Dunlap wants to slow that process, loading back the rich artifacts of history, reminding us of roots, culture, traditions. He romances, in his careful artistic waltz, the past into the present. His pause allows a more humane position, an enviable one when seen by the harried and hustled, perhaps.

Nomenclatures (art and language, form and content, image and icon) are Dunlap’s specialties. His paintings, watercolors, assemblages, sculptural oddities and artifacts are refined by a broad art historical awareness and a time and effort to suffer about what we have lost, perhaps.

Jack Cowart
Deputy Director/Chief Curator
Corcoran Gallery of Art

 

Copyright 2003 William Dunlap. All rights reserved.
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