About: Artist Dunja Pelto

My paintings come from trying to solve spatial puzzles, such as the paradox of a vast view seen through a small window. The paintings deal with the constantly shifting relationships of physical mass in space, and usually start from a recognizable view and wander into abstraction, as I look for a way to bring attention to the wonderful, passing relationships of objects and the space around them when we, as observers, shift our view.

Paintings, unlike linear arts such as literature and music, have the interesting characteristic of being “all at once,” rather than being viewed from a beginning through to an end. This allows the luxury of presenting different events simultaneously; also, each “event” is timeless--the woman in the painting will forever be looking at the portfolio—and somehow, being able to follow a scene without a sense of passing time gives paintings a very meditative quality. My intention is to make paintings that provide enough of a puzzle of real space that the viewer is intrigued, and enough left undefined that the viewer can create their own interpretations of the space.

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