Dennis Miller Bunker "Medfield Meadow"
I began drawing as a very small child. From the age of six
I had taken classes at the Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, MA. I can still remember walking past a beautiful young woman's portrait in the museum corridor whose identity I learned much later was a painting by Joseph DeCamp, a member of the Boston School "Ten", in whose painting ideals and training I would ultimately follow.
The interest in art continued into my early teen years when my mother asked me "what do you want to do in life?" I said: "I want to be an artist." Thankfully for me my mother was a free spirit, musician and dancer. Her artistic upbringing had been carefully nurtured, so she did everything possible to assist me. At 15 I was enrolled in art classes at Sharon Art Center in New Hampshire with Sidney F. Willis and John Enser. Their work represented the two different modes of representational painting. Mr. Enser invariably heavily edited his plein air subject matter with quick colorful flourishes using liner brushes creating a very tactile surface that minimally represented the scene. Mr. Willis is an impressionist in the coloration of light and a fine draftsman in depicting the scene. His artistic training gained through Robert Douglas Hunter at Vesper George School of Art is a continuation of the Boston School traditions handed down through R.H. Ives Gammel who studied with William McGregor Paxton. Paxton began his artistic career studying with Dennis Miller Bunker then traveled to France to study at the academy with Jean Leon Gerome. Tragically Bunker's extreme talent was cut short by his early death.
I had taken classes at the Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, MA. I can still remember walking past a beautiful young woman's portrait in the museum corridor whose identity I learned much later was a painting by Joseph DeCamp, a member of the Boston School "Ten", in whose painting ideals and training I would ultimately follow.
The interest in art continued into my early teen years when my mother asked me "what do you want to do in life?" I said: "I want to be an artist." Thankfully for me my mother was a free spirit, musician and dancer. Her artistic upbringing had been carefully nurtured, so she did everything possible to assist me. At 15 I was enrolled in art classes at Sharon Art Center in New Hampshire with Sidney F. Willis and John Enser. Their work represented the two different modes of representational painting. Mr. Enser invariably heavily edited his plein air subject matter with quick colorful flourishes using liner brushes creating a very tactile surface that minimally represented the scene. Mr. Willis is an impressionist in the coloration of light and a fine draftsman in depicting the scene. His artistic training gained through Robert Douglas Hunter at Vesper George School of Art is a continuation of the Boston School traditions handed down through R.H. Ives Gammel who studied with William McGregor Paxton. Paxton began his artistic career studying with Dennis Miller Bunker then traveled to France to study at the academy with Jean Leon Gerome. Tragically Bunker's extreme talent was cut short by his early death.
I continued portrait, still life and plein air landscape classes with Sid Willis for two years before he offered me private classes at his studio. This started a six year close association of a type of apprenticeship. At 16 I started winning awards at national shows at Ogunquit, MA and Southern Vermont Art Center, Manchester, VT and selling my landscapes and still life paintings. Hanging my paintings in these shows with highly admired painters like Aldro Hibbard, Richard Lack, Robert Douglas Hunter and Don Stone gave me enormous pride. Landscape painting was my true love. Just to be outside in nature gave me true joy. When at a local hospital fair, I spied an out of print book priced at 10 cents by R.H. Ives Gammel about "Dennis Miller Bunker", this painter had started William McGregor Paxton's training. I did not discover until years later that for a time my mother and I lived in the Southborough estate of Sarah Choate Sears, a wealthy socialite and painter who not only studied with Bunker but entertained her artist friends including Bunker and John Singer Sargent at the estate. Bunker had traveled to France and painted landscapes with Sargent. Both painters were very influenced by Monet. Bunker's landscapes thrilled me. One lovely Bunker painting hidden in a dark corner at the Isabella Stuart Gardner Art Museum, Boston, MA brought me back again and again. When I left for college at Skidmore, I continued to spend vacations and summers studying with Mr. Willis. My first real adventure as a landscape painter began at his urging. Following my Skidmore graduation, I left for Vermont not knowing where I would land to begin a new life. Eventually I landed in northern Vermont in the Stowe area. I spent three delightful years there painting all the seasons and doggedly painting and surviving the very cold heavy snow.
In the early seventies an urge to go west brought me to the San Francisco Bay Area. I immediately fell in love with the beautiful coast and rolling hills. Here I will stay.
My goal in painting is to combine the French academic tradition of fine draftsmanship with the lovely observed color of objects influenced by natural light as perfected by the impressionists. There is no reason for muddy or grey coloring. The beautiful subtleties of color in nature deserve to be rendered faithfully. These color variations in painting make the difference between a good painting and an excellent one. As well as lovely coloring, good pictoral design is a must in every painting whether it is a still life or landscape. Good design is a fundimental of painting just as much as strong value contrast of light to dark to create a complete work of art. To me Johannes Vermeer's paintings are the perfection of this ideal.
