THE LANDSCAPES OF KATHLEEN DUNNE
There is a stretch of the Tuscan coast road near Carrara where, on a summer morning, glancing up at the ridge of mountains overlooking the sea, you have the illusion that snow has fallen during the night. In reality, the areas of white are caused by the shining white dust of the marble quarries, active since Roman times and, in the art lover's mind, still echoing to the cries of Michelangelo and Giambologna. These seemingly endless veins of the finest marble, quarried in a thousand sites with towering facades and deep-cut crevasses, faceted like huge blocks of milky Artic ice, have for generations satisfied the demands of insatiable sculptors, have furnished the architectural needs of both democracies and tyrannies and, at a more mundane level, adorned a million homes. Quarries are usually low-lying, sunk in ravines or hidden from sight; only in Carrara do they sit proudly on the mountain peaks, extravagantly displaying their precious produce for all to see.
Just a brief drive to the South, lying a short distance from the Mediterranean, is the walled city of Lucca, never conquered by any foe, and thus with its Medieval fortifications still intact; the noble gateways set with huge open fireplaces, used in earlier times to warm the guards in winter; a tower in the centre of the town in topped by trees and the campanile of the cathedral is faced sparingly, only at the top, with the white marble of Carrara as if to underline the value of the material, or perhaps indicating the parsimonious spending of the elders of the city. Throughout the surrounding countryside, along the ridgeways and crests of the hills, sit dozens of magnificently placed romanesque churches, rarely more than an hour's walk one from another, fruit of the building boom of the early thirteenth century, and marking the contours of the Villa Francigena, the old pilgrim's way to Rome. As with all such Italian architecture there is an extraordinary sensibility in the choice of the site, the buildings blending imperceptibly into their rural surroundings.
This is the territory where Kathleen Dunne has decided to live and work. Not forgetting past journeys to Ireland, rural France and other places which formerly satisfied her need for simple, yet dramatic, settings for her work, there can be no doubt than in Lucca and its surroundings she has found an almost limitless source of inspiration for her powerful landscape studies. An evident admiration for the Constructivists and Expressionists forms the starting point of her investigations of these Tuscan buildings and the hillsides they inhabit, and imparts a pleasingly familiar aspect to her rendition of landscape; but to this must be added the particularity of her own individual vision, as she seeks out the inner shapes inherent in these carefully elected views, finding corners and angles that satisfy her painterly eye. And again, in her use of colour, the influence of Italy is of paramount importance; the interplay of light and shade, the rich palette of such abundant use of green, red, orange and blue, reflects the drama of the Tuscan summer light - as in the blazing orange sky which pervades the flaming summer rooftops of Gombitelli. These are not tranquil works, simply recording the pastoral beauty of her surroundings, but rather forceful, at time almost willful, reinterpretations of the scene before her eye, coaxing out both the sombre and the sublime elements that lie within the landscape. The depiction of the hills around her Orbicciano home, at times Cezanne-like in the exploration of the latent inner geometry, distorts reality, compressing or expanding contours and horizons, with the evident aim of capturing the drama of the view. Yet more striking are the forms released from the squarci of the multi-faceted quarries of Carrara or the zoomed-in details of the gateways and portals of the walls of Lucca, at times verging on the abstract, all subjects which respond to Kathleen Dunne's painterly vision. The striking use of both form and colour are merged in a masterful fashion, whilst at the same time one cannot fail to admire the almost sculptural quality of the paint surface , elaborately harassed and bullied with layers of colour and glaze, to imbue the scene with depth and power.
Kathleen Dunne is very much a Californian, conscious of the vibrant effects of colour and light, coming from a countryside that does not lack in drama, but in the hills surrounding her Tuscan home, she has perhaps found a site which, like the great quarries of Carrara, should supply her needs for many years to come.
John Winter, Lucca 2008