What started with a fourth grade teacher who saw promise in a portrait of Abraham Lincoln and insisted on extracurricular art instruction, led to a life filled with artistic endeavor in many mediums. Though Gwen's BA degree was in English Literature, due to parental requirements, she was determined to become an artist. Through a series of fortuitous jobs and mentors, she was able to gain experiential training and forged a career as a graphic artist and product designer.
During this period, she also explored areas as diverse as studying with a master sign painter, becoming the artist for the Department of Agriculture, serving as graphics director for a management consulting firm and for a paper products manufacturer. In addition she licensed artwork for fine art publishers and art posters. All the while she studied painting and exhibited representational landscapes and portraits in the Carolinas and Georgia.
When an experiment with designing useful products bearing images of her art turned into a full-time business, she formed Gwen Gunter Designs and for the next 14 years serviced wholesale accounts nationwide. As that business ran its course, she returned to painting full time becoming a student at the Atlanta College of Art. During this period she began the transition into abstraction. She soon realized that abstraction would be her direction and purpose.
In the summer of 2015 she was able to take advantage of a period of intensive study and painting in Taos, NM. While there she became immersed in images from sketchbooks she had been creating but not painting for many years. Encouraged to see where this direction could lead, she began painting these images in a simplified graphic manner concentrating on shape and line. This has become an exciting new direction resulting in the series "The Shapes of Things to Come."
A fascination with the division of space drives this new work which uses both intuition and a specific spatial vision. The choice of each color or shape or line has come to be like a poet selecting just the right verb or metaphor. Images are becoming clearer and cleaner. The line has become sharper, more surely directed as she continues to explore new territory from her studio near Atlanta, Ga.
Partial Selection Group Shows
2017 - Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition , Brooklyn, NY
Laura Phipps, Assistant Curator at The Whitney Museum of American Art, juror
2017 - 9th National Juried Exhibition - Prince Street Gallery, New York, NY
Stuart Shils, juror
2017 - Gathered -MOCA GA
Atlanta, GA - Masud Olufani, Rocio Rodriguez and Jerry Siegel, jurors
2017 - Callanwolde Gallery 2017 Juried Art Exhibition
Atlanta, GA - Susan Bridges, juror
2016 - Rocky Mountain National Water Media Show
Golden, Colorado - Katherine Chang Liu, juror
2016 - Anne Irwin Fine Art Emerging Artists, Atlanta, GA
2016 - LaGrange Southeast Regional - Deanna Sirlin, juror
LaGrange Museum, LaGrange, GA
2015 - "Eye Level" Atlanta Critique Group
Mable House Art Center, Atlanta
2015 - "Layers" Womens Caucus for the Arts of Georgia
Perimeter College, Atlanta
2014- "Roots" Blue Mark Gallery, Atlanta
2014 - Holiday Show
2Rules Fine Art, Marietta, GA
2014 - "Southern Connection"
2Rules Fine Art, Marietta, GA
2013 - Holiday Show
2Rules Fine Art, Marietta, GA
2012 - "Colors of Summer"
2Rules Fine Art, Marietta, GA