Dustan Knight (b 1958) is a professional artist still living in her childhood home on a tiny island between New Hampshire and Maine. She earned her MFA from Pratt Institute in the Eighties and spent ten years on the lower east side of Manhattan exhibiting her art, writing art reviews for ArtSpeak ( a biweekly art newspaper) and working as a gallery manager in a Soho gallery. When Aids hit NYC she returned to New England, earning her MA in Art History from Boston University, writing her Masters thesis on Jean Michel Basquiat. She began her twenty year teaching career at various NE Universities and Art Colleges. Dustan exhibits continuously and won numerous awards including a residency at MacDowell Artist Colony in Peterborough NH, an artist residency at Cummington Art Colony in the Berkshires, a NH State Fellowship for the Arts grant, several percent for the arts awards, finalist in the Piscataqua Artist Advancement grant and recently a portfolio review via Surf Point Artist Foundation in York Maine and inclusion in the Center for Maine Contemporary Arts Biennial.Rockport Press published a book about her art in 2017 and she has been included in the coffee table art book Piscataqua Painters and publications about the Ogunquit Art Association. Dustan’s relationship with Maine is a lifetime love affair. Years of summering on the islands and cruising the Penobscot Bay as well as family homes and teaching and exhibiting her art identify her a true Maine Artist. Dustan’s current body of work is loosely defined as her Puddledock Series. Pulling from narrative paintings she exhibited in NY during the Eighties, this current work is inspired by an art show she curated in 2023 in Portsmouth NH. It explored the stories of early twenty-first century residents of the seaside community. Growing up in a place known for its fishing, sailing and lobstering traditions, its easy for her to imagine a world peopled by the folks she grew up with. The camaraderie, interdependency and fierce independence of the Yankee personality creates a rich narrative of people living and working together. “ I can remember walking home from our little town library on a winter evening and seeing the snow whirl around the street lights, hearing the late lobster boats coming in and seeing through uncurtained windows little snippets of nothing really - life , I guess- people I knew, parents of school friends, grandparents, cousins and babies.This has always stayed with me and I think I am trying to express that in these art pieces.” “I really want to suggest the intimacy and tensions of a close knit community that depends on each member to survive as a whole.” Dustan’s narrative assemblages of painted reclaimed wood blocks are of every day moments - hoisting lobster traps, sorting fish, hanging laundry from upper story windows… that are peopled by simplifies portraits of regular characters. Often her titles are lines from internal or spoken dialogue between figures. Dustan says ‘Nothing particularly heroic or exceptional is happening in the scenes - its just regular folks living regular lives trying to make a go of it.” “For me its a passing glimpse out of the corner of your eyes, an overheard conversation from an open window or voices echoing across the water - that gives us a bit of a moment of recognition of being human.” Artist Statement I work in long series that share a common theme. Often these themes are drawn from my personal experiences. Time not in the studio is usually spend walking, riding, gardening or boating - and these images reoccur frequently. Snow, ice, wind-blown island gardens, light reflecting on water, raw granite ledges, meandering trails among sparse trees with glimpses of sun dazzling ocean beyond, reappear more, but usually less, literally. The surface of my paintings is important to me, and I take great delight in the transitions from bare canvas to thick impasto and foreign materials. The rhythm and energy of the marks and shapes is rigorously determined - varying to create musical passages. The palettes are simplified and fundamental to the mood of each painting. I like the viewer to look longer at my paintings. I invite my audience to connect and participate in creating the artwork's meaning.