Artist Statement

I am an artist who typically works with materials gathered from nature, and often generate my projects specifically in response to sites and landscapes.  My goal is to create a dialog about nature and human desire, and the tensions between the natural and the human made world. Laboriously crafted objects and props are typically a part of my activities, and these are often created to help me integrate my presence as a human in nature.  Raw material is obsessively collected and gathered on expeditions through natural sites and other more urban environments that I live or work in.  These processes force me to slow down and fully experience the world, and they become a daily discipline not unlike meditation.  In these personal interactions with the world through my activities and artworks, I work to present the fragility of nature and our ambivalent relationship with it, with compassion, humor and reverence.

Artist Bio

Dorene Quinn was born in Portland Oregon and has a Bachelor of Fine Art in Printmaking and painting from the Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland Oregon, and a Master of Fine Art in Sculpture from the New York State College of Art and Design at Alfred University in Alfred, NY. Quinn maintained a studio practice and was a professor of studio art at Pratt/Munson Williams Proctor Art Institute and Syracuse University. In 2011 she co-founded and directed a community-based research project called Talent Agency Teen Art Portfolio Development, Inc., to address the lack of educational opportunities for creative youth who live in poverty in the city of Syracuse NY.  The project continued until the end of 2018.

Quinn has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions in galleries and museums throughout New York State and nationally, including the Everson Museum, Syracuse, NY, The Munson Williams Proctor Arts Institute, Utica, NY, The University Art Museum, Albany, the Schenectady Museum, The Schweinfurth Memorial Art Center, Auburn NY, The Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester, Rochester, NY, and Rochester Contemporary. She has been honored with grants and awards for her work Including a NYFA MARK Fellowship, and a NYSCA Special Opportunity Stipend Grant, and received fellowships for artist residencies at the Julia and David White Artist Colony in Costa Rica,  Sitka Center for Art and Ecology in Oregon, Saltonstall Foundation, Ithaca NY, Joshua Tree Highlands Artist Residency program in Joshua Tree California, Sam and Adele Golden Foundation in New Berlin, NY, and Willapa Bay AIR, in Oysterville, Washington.

In 2017, Quinn returned permanently to the West Coast to establish a studio practice in the high desert in Southern California where she resides with her partner artist Yvonne Buchanan.