Biography

Born and trained in Sydney, Dunlop travelled and painted in Europe and London during the 1960s, and lived and worked in Tuscany in 1982-83. He is best known as an accomplished painter, making over ninety portraits during his career. From 1984 the artist was based in Melbourne and Port Fairy.
He said:
I was interested in simple, straightforward observation. I was trying to get away from ideas about art…I was letting Nature and its rhythms solely dictate the structure of a painting to me, while being concerned to not impose my own will too strongly on the subject matter.
In 1997 Canberra art historian Sasha Grishin wrote:
His prints present a slightly transfigured reality, often masked by a degree of tension and suspense. As with Vermeer or Justin O’Brien, all is beautifully structured, balance and resolved, yet there lingers the unsettling note of the enigma, a strange presence and mysterious force.

Katherine McDonald, Forever Spring exhibition, 17/09/21