Statement:

The reason I started to focus on painting is because I needed something to limit my options.

Biography:

Carroll Dunham was born in 1949. Spurred on by the revival of interest in Surrealism in the 1970s, Dunham began to make abstract, biomorphic paintings reminiscent of the work of Arshile Gorky and André Masson, executed with a comic twist enhanced by lurid colors and the suggestion of contemporary psychedelia. In the 1980s he began to paint on wood veneer and rose to prominence in the context of a broader return to painting in that period. Around 1993 his paintings began to feature schematic, cartoon figures which suggest the influence of Philip Guston. He has been the subject of numerous one-person exhibitions, including a mid-career retrospective at the New Museum in New York and an exhibition of paintings and sculptures since 2004 at Millesgarden in Stockholm. Carroll Dunham currently lives and works in New York and Connecticut.