Dianne Massey Dunbar’s anxiety about driving during a thunderstorm was so severe she orchestrated her comings and goings to ensure she was safely at home when there was even a possibility of inclement weather. “It was life-limiting,” shares Dunbar. “When a forecaster said it was going to rain, I wanted to be in the basement.”
Despite all of her precautionary measures, one day Dunbar found herself stuck in rush hour traffic in Denver when a nasty storm brewed up unexpectedly. She was petrified and, although to this day she can’t say exactly why, she reached for her camera and started taking photos of the rain-streaked windshield.
A Little Bit of Happy, 2022, oil, 24 x 24 in.
“I must’ve been looking for a diversion in my panic because I couldn’t go anywhere,” says Dunbar. “But each of the raindrops suddenly became shapes, some became dragons, snakes and salamanders. I saw my face in some of them, and the amazing expressions of those raindrops took away the fear. When we look at the world through our artist eyes, other things get pushed out. When I looked at it differently, it became less frightening. It became about shapes and colors and reflections…experiencing the raindrops for what they were, shifted my focus and alleviated the anxiety. It was a life-changing moment.”
Dunbar was so captivated by the raindrops, she started going out in mild to moderate storms because her desire for reference material outweighed her fear. Not only did the experience loosen the grip of her anxiety, it led Dunbar down a new path of creativity that culminated in her Rain on Windshield series of paintings.
Rain on Windshield: Rosie’s Diner, 2019, oil, 18 x 24 in.
Looking through Dunbar’s portfolio, the first thing that jumps out is the vast variety of subject matter, stylistic approaches and artistic versatility. In addition to the rain-splashed windshield works, which evolved from traffic scenes like Red Light to paintings of neon-lit local businesses viewed through the glass as in Rosie’s Diner, she has created a large body of still lifes. She’s painted cans and bottles and assorted jars in varying degrees of realism and impressionism. She’s painted florals, food assemblages, toys, teacups, cowboy boots and more. She’s painted cityscapes, a rare figurative series of construction workers that shows she has chops in that genre as well and, more recently, dense thickets of sunflowers, spindly treetops and other nature-inspired works.
While these subjects might seem disparate or the product of the flighty whims of an unfocused artist, they are not random. Dunbar’s choices are always deliberate, and are windows into what matters most to her.
Guardians, 2023, oil on board, 30 x 30 in. Courtesy Gallery 1261, Denver, CO.
“For me, art is a form of communication,” says Dunbar. “And my subject matter reflects what’s important in my world, what I feel like I have a voice in and have something to say about. I get involved in a subject and may persist until I don’t have anything else to say about it. I may return to it I may not. “You can communicate through subject matter and through the way one paints." she continues. “I have the highest respect for artists that love and admire beautiful things, and they are art-worthy subjects. The problem I have with that is it defines beauty as something that happens every so often…I would hope that people look at a coffee cup and see the beauty in the object or the shape of a reflection, or the treetops outside the window, or the sunflowers that come up through the sidewalk cracks and beautify our lives. I hope that people see the beauty in our moment-to-moment lives.”
Rain on Windshield: Open, 2020, oil, 30 x 30 in.
Dunbar painted Guardians, 2023, after observing a stand of trees in the middle of a construction zone. “It was a whole row of trees and they mattered to me because that area was undergoing development and it was making me sad,” says Dunbar. “They stood there like sentinels, just this ordinary row of trees.” Dunbar’s painting is far from ordinary—the focus is on the upper parts of the trees, the branches a crisp tangle of dendrites against a faded winter sky.
Balance, 2024, oil, 12 x 8 in.
Even her vintage Coke bottle paintings hold personal significance, harkening back to childhood memories of when, if she and her two sisters were good, they were allowed to split a bottle of soda before bed. “We’d pour it into three glasses and inevitably there’d be a fight because someone got three drops more,” she laughs. “I have fond memories of that, and I remember those precious childhood memories when I paint them. My experience has been if I’m painting something I have no feeling about or no connection to, it’s flatter, it lacks that ‘something’ that happens when I’m really invested. And I almost never paint something I’m not invested in.”
Rain on Windshield: Red Light, 2019, oil, 30 x 30 in.
In 2016, Dunbar’s creative indignance was stirred up by the treatment of a construction crew toiling away on her street for several months. “I think people have concepts or opinions of street workers,” she says. “They were coming within inches of all this heavy equipment in the sweltering sun, and people would come by and disparage them. They deserve so much more respect, the unseen people who contribute to our country. I wanted to say something about these workers making the community a better place.
In the Spotlight, 2024, oil, 12 x 9 in.
“I’m really proud of that series and the story behind it,” Dunbar continues. “And I painted them for a reason. I got to know those people—they were skeptical at first. But I watched them day after day, photographing them in 95 degree-plus heat. It was like watching a ballet. These paintings are a harder sell because most people can’t imagine having construction workers in their living room. But that’s not why I painted them. I remain very grateful to those men and who they represent.”
These Boots…, 2022, oil, 30 x 40 in.
The way Dunbar paints, in a sense, mirrors the structure of life. “I think the whole world is much set up that way,” she says. “Each person is a building block that matters. Our bodies are made up of cells which become organs, and it repeats itself over and over again—the replication of little shapes merging together to make bigger shapes and so on.”
After undergoing cataract surgery with complications, painting is slow-going but Dunbar still puts in five to six hours a day, five to six days a week. With her vision impaired, her mobility is limited, and what Dunbar paints is often dictated by what she encounters close to home.
Cement and Tree Shadows, oil on board, 30 x 24 in.
“Making art is hard for me,” says Dunbar, “and probably so for all artists. It isn’t magic. It’s work and it doesn’t happen unless I show up. And as I’ve gotten older, I realize it’s purpose that matters.
“I have found when I don’t paint, I feel unsatisfied…When I’m working on a painting there’s a part of me that’s with that painting, solving problems. I see people in my age group that don’t have a passion or are done with ‘purpose’ and I’m not. Having purpose is a way of being present with myself and the world.” —
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