Newly Commissioned Painting, "Creating a Sacred Space"

25" x 58"

Acrylic and mixed Media on Canvas

Private Collection of Nancy Rabe

Fine Art Giclee Prints available here

When Nancy came to the art studio to pick up this painting, she jokingly said, "Thank you for my baby!", but she actually hit the nail on the head with her remark.  Parting with my pieces reminds me of the feeling of giving birth, in a sense that you are sending a piece of you out into the world, off to live a life of its own after you have so lovingly worked on its development.  But it is absolutely a labor of love. 

A shot of the painting in progress, which I stretched on the wall of my art studio. 

The title of this painting comes from an infusion of a few elements that came together.  When Nancy approached me to create a piece, she was looking for something to fit the entryway of her newly built home, one she and her husband had designed and watched go up over the past year. Nancy already had an image in mind of this beautiful landscape, majestic in its serenity. As I explained my process to her and in an attempt to make the painting more personable and meaningful, I asked her to provide me with building plans of the house, which I made multiple copies of and used in the background to build depth and texture.  The plans are almost completely covered up, but there are places in which these are barely visible, like on the tree trunks toward the center/right here:

In addition to being a woman who is dedicated to her family and career, Nancy is an advanced yoga practitioner and teacher who I have had the pleasure of getting to know at Exhale through our mutual love of yoga. In fact, we both realized we were twins in class one day when we showed up wearing the same pink t-shirt that said the words, "sacred space" on them. Our friendship has unfolded into a beautiful and natural appreciation and respect for one another and the joy that comes from our spirited family of yoga practitioners. 


The notion of a sacred space is complex, encompassing a range of aspects: architecture, geography, core beliefs, community stories, and not least of all the receptivity of one’s soul. When several of these elements come together, the results are breathtaking. I felt that through the loving and thoughtful construction of their home, Nancy was creating this space, a sacred space, for her family and the legacy they will leave.


Sacred truths require faith. G. K. Chesterton has described the phenomenon of faith as being like the sun: one cannot look at it directly, but everything else is seen more clearly because of it. And it is in this domain of knowing and yet not knowing, of understanding more than we can explain, of mystery, that sacredness resides.

New Painting, "The Search for Simplicity"

In Search of Simplicity New Painting Oil and Mixed Media on Canvas 16" x 20" x 1.5" Available "One day I will find the right words. And they will be simple." -Kerouac This painting was literally 5 other paintings before it was this one. There was so much I was trying to say with this canvas, and the message got really jumbled in my head. I felt like my ideas, my wishes for this one were in one of those stone tumblers that I used to long for as a kid, those mysterious machines that took ordinary rocks, swallowed them, and spat them out all shiny and interesting-looking. Once I stopped trying to force the ideas and let the painting speak through me, speak to me, did it emerge. That's how it always happens. One day I will learn...

New Painting, The Quest for Clarity

16" x 20"

Oil and Mixed Media on Canvas
Available for online purchase here

“More important than the quest for certainty is the quest for clarity.” -Francois Gautier

If you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans, right? Well, He has certainly had a good laugh on my behalf.

You think I would learn by now that good things only come from an authentic place, a place of clarity. This painting was a little light in the middle of feeling creatively tapped out at the moment. I have been working in the studio, a little too hard lately, with a sense of certainty...certain that I have to create something important, certain that this next piece will be my greatest.  After a week, it seems I ended up completely scrapping three canvases, just too overworked to salvage, and this one that was sort of my "test" canvas, my  "study" where I could be loose and free and not worry about the outcome so much, was the jewel.

Certainty can sometimes silence our strongest instincts–when, ironically, certainty is always an illusion.

The secure job could become obsolete. The dependable friend could move away. The stable relationship could run its course.

None of the things that seem secure and safe are guaranteed to endure–not forever, or for any length of time, for that matter. The nature of life is that everything moves and changes, ebbs and flows, with beginnings, middles, and ends.

We don’t get to know what will end when. We don’t get to know how long things will last. We can play the odds, try to align ourselves with probability for maximum longevity, comfort, and ease. Or we can instead focus on the possibilities that excite us and enjoy the journey to and through them, one moment at a time.

We can either make what seems to be the best choice for minimal loss and change; or we can get clear about what we want to do with the short amount of time we have, and then embrace the unknown, with our passion as a compass, finding our way as we go.

The irony about choosing the path that seems the most certain is that it generally guarantees only one thing: that we go through life wondering how things could have been if only we weren’t so scared.

Today if you find yourself clinging to something that feels predictable and safe, ask yourself: Are these the moments I want to remember when I look back on my life some day?

Newly Commissioned Painting, "Plant Your Own Garden and Decorate Your Soul""

"Plant Your Own Garden and Decorate Your Own Soul"

16" x 20"

Acrylic and Mixed on Canvas
Tegeler Collection

I worked on this painting for a Collector, who also happens to be a dear friend, to be given as a gift to her niece on her 5th birthday. 


I thought of her the whole time and how much she is loved by her Aunt and wanted to convey that love as well as the wonderment of seeing the beauty of life through a child's eyes. 


The best compliment I could have received is hearing how much the child enjoyed running her hands over the rich texture and told her mom in a whisper, "I really like it, Mama."

"There are always flowers for those who want to see them."

-  Henri Matisse

A Poem for Wednesday, and a New Painting..."What Lies Beneath"

"What Lies Beneath"
24" x 36"
Oil and Mixed Media on Canvas
The original painting is for sale and prints are also available on Etsy.


Feeling a little somber today...maybe it's the cold.  Snowed in for the fifth day in 2 weeks, I pulled out some sketch books from high school and found this Sylvia Plath poem on one of the first pages.  Yes, going back to my teen-angst-ridden, Plath-quoting days is always an interesting place to revisit. Despite all the years that passed when I first stumbled across her poetry, the words are still so powerful to me. The poem spoke through my new work and let me see it in a new light.

"Elm"

I know the bottom, she says. I know it with my great tap root; 

It is what you fear. 

I do not fear it: I have been there. 

Is it the sea you hear in me,

Its dissatisfactions? 

Or the voice of nothing, that was you madness? 

Love is a shadow. 

How you lie and cry after it. 

Listen: these are its hooves: it has gone off, like a horse. 

All night I shall gallup thus, impetuously,

Till your head is a stone, your pillow a little turf, 

Echoing, echoing. 

Or shall I bring you the sound of poisons? 

This is rain now, the big hush. 

And this is the fruit of it: tin white, like arsenic. 

I have suffered the atrocity of sunsets. 

Scorched to the root 

My red filaments burn and stand,a hand of wires. 

Now I break up in pieces that fly about like clubs. 

A wind of such violence 

Will tolerate no bystanding: I must shriek. 

The moon, also, is merciless: she would drag me 

Cruelly, being barren. 

Her radience scathes me. Or perhaps I have caught her. 

I let her go. I let her go 

Diminished and flat, as after radical surgery. 

How your bad dreams possess and endow me. 

I am inhabited by a cry. 

Nightly it flaps out 

Looking, with its hooks, for something to love. 

I am terrified by this dark thing 

That sleeps in me; 

All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity. 

Clouds pass and disperse. 

Are those the faces of love, those pale irretrievables? 

Is it for such I agitate my heart? 

I am incapable of more knowledge. 

What is this, this face 

So murderous in its strangle of branches?-- 

Its snaky acids kiss. 

It petrifies the will. These are the isolate, slow faults 

That kill, that kill, that kill.

New Paintings, "Connected and Detached"

22" x 36"

(2 canvases, 18" x 22" each)

Oil and Mixed Media on Canvas

"In the space of letting go, she let it all be.  A small smile came over her face.  A light breeze blew through her. And the sun and moon shined forevermore."

-Safire Rose

I worked on these canvases at the same time and simply cannot decide if they are supposed to remain connected or not...they work both separate and together.  All this thinking about connection led me to the title, and got me thinking about the meaning behind the connections between all of us.

I think the easy part about manifesting/creating those things that we want in our lives is the desire and the imagining.  These are the fun parts. For me, the hard part is detachment.

Often, we get attached to how we expect certain things to come to us, when or where. Or we are attached to how certain things/people "should " or "ought to" be.  And of course, these expectations hinder us. We get in our own way.

The secret is in the allowing and the understanding and with that, the letting go.

Perhaps today, right now, is finally the time just to let it all go, and let it all be.

This painting is currently on display at Momo's on Knox in Dallas and available for purchase. Fine art giclee prints available on Etsy.

New Painting, "I Love You as Big as the Sky"

12" x12"

Watercolor and Mixed Media on Canvas

There is nothing that makes me happier than hearing my children say these words to me.  They inspire me even more than I think I can begin to realize. I always tell my 4.5 year-old that the biggest gift God gives you when you become a mommy is that He helps your heart open and grow in ways you never thought possible and you learn to love more and more each day. I love it when paintings just flow from a happy place, and this was one of them.  

This painting will be on display at The Cameron Gallery in February at their "Made for Love" Exhibition.  Preview for this show is 2/10 and opening reception is 2/19.  The Cameron Gallery is located on Dragon Street in the Design District.

New Painting, "Spaces in Our Togetherness"

24" x 28" x 1.5"

Oil and Mixed Media on Canvas

“But let there be spaces in your togetherness and let the winds of the heavens dance between you. Love one another but make not a bond of love: let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.”

 Kahlil Gibran

After I finished this painting, I tried to make some sense of it and figure out where it came from within me. Sometimes I know before I paint, and sometimes, as in the case of this one, it only becomes obvious afterwards. 

Anyone who follows my work can see that birch trees are one of my favorite subjects. They simultaneously convey a strength and frailty that I find fascinating. I looked at the painting above and realized that there are five trees in this one. "Why did I just paint 5 this time?", I asked myself. Then I realized that there are 5 people in my family and discovered upon reflection that this painting was inspired subconsciously by them. My husband and my three children are my whole world. However, without the spaces in our togetherness, without my time to myself, often spent in the studio, to nourish my spirit and my soul, I am not fully me. These spaces in our togetherness make us whole, make us strong, as much as anything else.

If you are interested in purchasing this painting, email me for details.

A Poem for Wednesday: Poetry

Life on Mars          11" x 14"                    Oil and Mixed Media on Gallery Wrapped Canvas       Available on Etsy Poetry

And it was at that age ... Poetry arrived in search of me. I don't know, I don't know where it came from, from winter or a river. I don't know how or when, no they were not voices, they were not words, nor silence, but from a street I was summoned, from the branches of night, abruptly from the others, among violent fires or returning alone, there I was without a face and it touched me. I did not know what to say, my mouth had no way with names, my eyes were blind, and something started in my soul, fever or forgotten wings, and I made my own way, deciphering that fire, and I wrote the first faint line, faint, without substance, pure nonsense, pure wisdom of someone who knows nothing, and suddenly I saw the heavens unfastened and open, planets, palpitating plantations, shadow perforated, riddled with arrows, fire and flowers, the winding night, the universe. And I, infinitesimal being, drunk with the great starry void, likeness, image of mystery, felt myself a pure part of the abyss, I wheeled with the stars, my heart broke loose on the wind.  Pablo Neruda

New Painting, "Big as the Sky"

24" x 24" 

Oil and Mixed Media on Canvas

Would you hold my head up high?
Would you make my life as big as the sky?
Would you spend the rest of your life with me?"
-a.m. sixty

The painting is a part of my abstract series and was created using oil paint, mixed media and collage. I have yet to visit Montana, but am confident we will get to Jackson Hole in the next few summers and am curious if the image on my canvas, the one that my mind's eye holds, matches up to the reality of Big Sky Country. 


My aim in this work was to capture how this big sky, the universe, puts it all into perspective.  How can I feel so small sometimes and as others as big as the sky?

I have listed this one on etsy if you are interested in purchase.
Copyright of work, including all rights of reproduction in any form, are held by the artist.
©2010 Gina Marie Dunn

A Poem for Wednesday: The Road Not Taken

Solitary Pine

10" x 12"

Watercolor on Paper

This painting is available on my Etsy site.

The Road Not Taken 

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

by Robert Frost

Collective Subconscious

20" x 52"
(3 Canvases, 16" x 20" each)
Oil and Mixed Media on Canvas

The Swiss pshychoanalyist Carl Jung suggested that we all share a reservoir of memories--the collective unconsciousness--which consists of common images or archetypes, expressed as kind or wicked people, good or evil spirits, images in nature, etc.  These are derived from the long experience of the human race, passed down in an unconscious mode from our ancestors.  Thus we may all share the same images within our dreams or nightmares.

Do you ever dream of trees, forests or a quiet sky?  Sometimes I dream of things over and over again, only to process these dreams through a painting and then find the image in my head is gone.

See My Light; Love My Dark

12" x 16" 1.5"
Acrylic and Mixed on Canvas

“There can be no transforming of darkness into light and of apathy into movement without emotion” -Carl Jung

The most terrifying thing is to accept yourself completely. I created this piece with the sentiment that nobody is perfect, everyone is flawed in some way.  When you truly learn how to love someone, you love them as a whole person.  You love the dark and the light.

Thursday's Other Creative Soul: Kay Wood

I love artists who are not afraid of a little color. Artist Kay Wood explains her unique colorful style, dubbed "X-Generation Primitive".


"My name is Kay Wood and I am presently living in the Austin Texas Hill Country area, on a cattle ranch which was originally won in a poker game in the 1930's. I have a B.S. Degree in computer sciences with minors in Math and Psychology from Denver University (I originally pursued a degree in Fine Arts from Loretto Heights College in Denver Colorado - but gave into pressure to build money making skills for a better future.) There is a link between technology, music and art as it all uses the same side of the brain anyway!

I represent landscapes, interesting architecture, reflections and fun situations in my work which style has been called 'x-generation primitive', I've just recently begun accepting commission work so "You Travel, I'll paint it for you".

In a normal day, I spend my time taking care of domestic duties, do freelance I.T. Support work for Websites/Portals and Networking activities and spend about an hour painting. The ideal day would be focused painting, meeting with people and business for commission work, preparing for festival or gallery shows and distributing prints and images of my work for commercial and private use.

I am passionate about the environment, efficient land management, locally grown food and gardening. My goals for the future include distributing my work through gallery shows, festivals and the internet.

My creative influences are: Hieronymus Bosch, Don Holman and Paul Klee. I look up to Kathy Womak, a local artist who has built a successful business out of her talent and aspire to do the same.


I am obsessively motivated and have an unstoppable drive to create, it doesn't take much to get me going on a concept or idea, and I can't stop until I capture an idea. My one guilty pleasure for motivation would be an empty (of people) and clean work space with good music.

My natural working style is to camp-in to my work space for entire days on end, but unfortunately (or fortunately), my family/friends interfere with that tendency so at present I schedule time in to work and meet commission deadlines.

You can follow my daily painting blog at http://kaywood13.blogspot.com."

A Poem for Wednesday

Into the Dark
12" x 12"
Acrylic and Mixed Media on Canvas
This painting is available on Etsy: http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=32935416


The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (an excerpt)
by. T.S. Eliot

And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”—
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
Should say: “That is not what I meant at all.
That is not it, at all.”

And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor—
And this, and so much more?—
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
“That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all.”

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

Come and Talk Art with Me

Saturday, March 27
2-3 p.m.
Artisan Style Gallery
2417 Mahon St.
Dallas, TX 75201
www.artisanstyle.net

This is my first time to give an artist talk and I am feeling a little uncertain about whether anyone really cares what I have to say, but I guess that is the insecurity that lies behind every artist who puts themselves out there and bares their soul on a canvas. Come and join me this Saturday to discuss my work currently on exhibit in the Uncommon Ground show. The Gallery has asked me to touch on being a mother of three young children and balancing work and home life as my youngest one is just eight weeks old. I will also discuss my love for music and poetry, which have inspired so many of my pieces.

This will be a very informal event, and this is a great time to get to know me. I look forward to a dialogue about art, the creative process and hearing your thoughts!

Etsy Front Page News!

11" x 14"
Acrylic and Mixed Media on Gallery-Wrapped Canvas

Birch trees are fascinating to me. They convey a simultaneous strength and frailty that I can really identify with. It was delightful to wake up this morning and discover that my little birch tree painting above was featured on the front page of Etsy. This is the second time in two months one of my paintings has been featured--what an honor! I am so grateful for the exposure.

"A tree uses what comes its way to nurture itself. By sinking its roots deeply into the earth, by accepting the rain that flows towards it, by reaching out to the sun, the tree perfects its character and becomes great. ... Absorb, absorb, absorb. That is the secret of the tree." ~~Deng Ming-Dao ( Everyday Tao, 1996)

"Uncommon Ground" Opens Tonight!

"Life is a great big canvas, and you should throw all the paint you can on it." ~ Danny Kaye

I am so excited for the opening of my art show, "Uncommon Ground", tonight at Artisan Style Gallery in Uptown. What an honor to be featured with artists Debbie Carroll, Michelle Stroescu and Kate Wickham. Collectively, we have created over fifty works interpreting the modern landscape. My paintings above will be featured, along with many other new works. I hope all of my Dallas friends can make it out to the reception, if you miss it the show will run until 4/3. Now, onto more important things....what to wear, what to wear? A 6 week-postpartum figure is certainly not the ideal, but hopefully everyone will be looking at my paintings and not the baby weight I'm still trying to work off. :)