Pete Dunne
Ink, watercolor, spray, and acrylic on 22″ x 30″ watercolor paper
This portrait of Pete Dunne is the last painting I made in my now-former studio. I put everything I have into everything I do, but there are some that stay with me after I’m done and this will be one of those because it’s a landmark.
I feel like it was done a year ago instead of less than two weeks ago. Life has been on fast forward for a while now. Katy and I had been in that building for a decade and when it was sold and the new owners kicked all of the tenants out we’ve been running wild. In addition to having to move two units and find a new place, we had our normal business operations to keep going, too. I had to make this and five other paintings in addition to 50 top-secret paintings while packing up our lives and livelihoods.
That’s what I see when I look at this. I see my wife and I being pushed to our limits and finding out just how damn much we can do when pushed to those limits. I see the last page of a ten year chapter and what it looked like when I turned off the lights and locked the door for the last time.
What’s any of this have to do with Pete Dunne, the subject of the painting? Hell if I know. He was 15 when we moved into that building. Maybe that’s it: The world keeps on spinning. We lock up one door for the last time and unlock a new one for the first time. A kid watching wrestling today will be a fan-favorite wrestler ten years from now.
The world keeps on spinning.