This painting titled The Salvagers will be a part of my exhibition Branch Lines opening @norberghall on Saturday, March 16th. It is the first exhibition I’ve been able to travel to for a while so I’m really excited about being there for the opening. This painting depicts a scene I came across while watching trains in Indianapolis of two people salvaging steel from an abandoned railroad.
For my final post I am sharing this image of a pictograph created by ancestors of the Owen’s Valley Paiute and Shoshone people. I took this photo in a remote area of the Volcanic Tablelands in California during the fall of 2016. I was on a two week trip around the desert to collect rocks and paint. These pictographs are aged at 1,000-8,000 years and are a stunning example of mark making and drawing. I kept thinking of the similarities to Guston’s quality of line and how he is considered modern but this type of expression was considered anthropology for so long. Around 500 meters from here is another large pictograph that indigenous people in the area say is a depiction and map of the cycle of the thirteen moons.
Thanks for letting me share my favorite images over the past couple of weeks. @patrick_dunford
Noah Purifoy Outdoor Art Museum,
Joshua Tree, California
Today I wanted to change things up by sharing images of assemblages that Noah Purifoy made out in the desert at Joshua Tree, California. This was one of my favorite spots to visit when we lived in Southern California. Purifoy was an African-American sculptor who moved to Joshua Tree after years in Los Angeles. In Joshua Tree he created a stunning collection of sculptures that can still be visited to this day.
The sculptures are made of a stunning accumulation of all the waste materials he found throughout the Assemblage Assemblage area. Glass, old computer parts, bowling pins you name it. Some of the pieces are a comment on the deep racism that pervades US society and that he directly experienced. Purifoy called them Junk Dada. All photos are from my trips there from 2015-20.
Hi, my name is Patrick Dunford and I have been asked to share a few artworks by various artists on doing.and.doing. I’m going to focus on works by artists that live outside of major art centers. I live in Moorhead, Minnesota, which is right across the river from Fargo, North Dakota. Trains play a big role here and the tracks run right through the center of town. These watercolors are part of a large series that I have been working on depicting grain hopper cars I have seen in the area.
Ex-Trudeau Hopper (ok I think this photo is better geez) I made this painting while reading ‘Clearing the Plains’, which is about the awful treatment of Indigenous peoples by Canada. It made me think about my own education and what was left out to sustain the myth of Canada as a kind and gentle nation. Then I saw this ex government hopper rusting away on a siding in North Dakota. It highlights I think a conflict in my work I haven’t quite figured out but am thinking about a lot. The fact that the hoppers depict Co-ops and government programs that were created to help farmers and were influenced by Socialist ideas, but also help the continued settlement of the plains and the attempted destruction of indigenous peoples. (For some reason Instagram has been over saturating my photos I think it’s fixed here)
Patrick Dunford
Temporary ‘Retirement’ Community
2023
Oil on Canvas
30 x 40”
Installation photo: Patrick Dunford’s 2024 exhibition, “Branch Lines”, at Norberg Hall @norberghall in Calgary, Canada.
DM @patrick_dunford with inquiries
I made this painting while reflecting on my travels in the desert. I was living in San Diego, California at the time. I often went to the Cargo Muchacho ‘mountains’ (more like hills) to collect rocks and make drawings of the abandoned mines in the area. At the base, there were often groups of trailers around. Because it was Bureau of Land Management land, you could stay there for free. Many of the people living there worked in Yuma (30 minutes away) and had temporary employment at places like the Amazon warehouse, which was a short distance away. Other people were wandering for one reason or another. They’re all in similar situations to those depicted in the book (and movie) Nomadland. Many lost their retirement savings, permanent jobs, or homes during the financial crises of 2008.
I was interested in the contrast of these hills— with their scars from a previous industry and economic organization — and the lives being lived there now. Because the desert landscape preserves things, it shows how we have lived, and do live. I wanted also to show that these people still have agency, despite their being caught in harsh economic realities not of their own making.
(Moorhead Minnesota, USA)
One of my favorite places to find rail cars is at Garbage Hill. Also just one of my favorite places period. It is where Burlington Northern interchanges with CPKC so there are often many old hoppers.
Patrick Dunford’s rail hopper series is currently on view at Chandler Gallery, as a part of Settling, our current group exhibition running through October 4th.
Dunford’s recent watercolor series depicts rail hoppers, a type of railroad freight car designed to transport mostly agricultural materials, that he sees in nearby Fargo and Moorhead, as well as in Winipeg. Unlike locomotives, hopper cars are rarely repainted when they change owners. Because of this, Dunford reads their exterior markings like a history book, and as a way to investigate the economic history of the rail lines.
Dunford writes, “Ex Co-Op and Canadian Wheat Board cars now owned by private car holders show the reduction in farmer co-ops and public marketing boards for grain selling. There are also many cars still sporting the logos of fallen flag railroad lines that vanished with liberal railroad deregulation and the merger boom… As I get older, I am more interested in the passage of time that is written all over these hoppers in rust and faded logos.”
📸: @kathleenharrisonphoto
