Karen Lee Dunn

I have always made art. I worked in pencil, ink, water colors, charcoal and pastel. It was all part of the creative drive that kept me interested in experimenting throughout the years. I did some design, some illustration and a lot of sketching and doodling. But primarily I spent many hours a day in an office. When I came to San Miguel, I enrolled at Belles Artes and discovered oil painting. It became my obsession. After a year at Centro Cultural Nigromante, I met Donna and Tom Dickson, and spent the next five years studying and learning from two masters of representational painting. I am a street walker. I paint street scenes. All the nooks and crannies and rooftops and winding streets and vendors and parks. I paint the wonderful light and the contrasting shadows. I paint the faces and fun and the vibrancy that is this fascinating town. After more than a decade of painting San Miguel, I never tire of it. It never gets old. Lately I have been painting around the Juarez Park area: first inside, and now that the park is closed, around the perimeter. My next project will be the narrow streets that lead up to the Camino Real a Queretaro. My only fear is that I will run out of time enough to paint it all. We live in a magical town. Lovely light and energy and full of creative and interesting people. My goal is to attempt to capture and share with the observer the physical and emotional experience of living here. Of being able to walk through five hundred year old buildings, where life is slower, kinder, more generous. I hope to capture the soul of what makes our town so special and share it with others. I have the privilege of showing and selling my work in Galeria San Francisco in Fabrica Aurora, which has been my gallery for the past five years. I hope you will stop by and visit us. While you’re there, take minute to look at San Miguel the way I see it. Maybe you and I will make a long lasting connection.