American, b. 1949
Carroll Dunham is a contemporary American painter. Employing a unique stylization of the human figure, Dunham’s work playfully and crudely examines painting tropes and traditions. With thick black outlines and simple imagery—a blue sky, green trees, and pink flesh—he employs cartoonish semblances of nature and sexually grotesque imagery as a foil for experimenting with color and line. Dunham’s take on painting is opposed to an authorial identity, and rather offers a complex integration of formal crafting and philosophical thought. “The area in which I tend to wander when I’m thinking about my own work, is the area of how the mind works,” he has said. “How the personality is constructed. What parts of me can be allowed freedom and what parts can’t, all of which in the end come down to questions of the soul and what the soul is.”
Born in 1949 in New Haven, CT, Dunham went on to receive a BA from Trinity College, Hartford, CT in 1972. He received the Skowhegan Medal for Distinction in Painting in 2004. Dunham lives and works between Cornwall, CT and New York, NY with his wife and fellow artist Laurie Simmons.
Born in 1949 in New Haven, CT, Dunham went on to receive a BA from Trinity College, Hartford, CT in 1972. He received the Skowhegan Medal for Distinction in Painting in 2004. Dunham lives and works between Cornwall, CT and New York, NY with his wife and fellow artist Laurie Simmons.
