Elaine Dunham
Born in Los Angeles in the late 1950s, Mary Elaine Dunham (always called Elaine) was raised in Pasadena, California, where she attended Westridge School for Girls, graduating in 1976. In 1980, she graduated magna cum laude from Amherst College in Amherst, Massachusetts with a B.A. in English. She earned a Master of Theological Studies at Harvard Divinity School in 1983 and married William J. Moriarty, a divinity school classmate, in late 1984. For eight years (1985-–1993) she was employed as an editor for Fortress Press and for Augsburg Fortress. With her husband--in Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Coos Bay, Oregon--Elaine raised three sons. When Elaine and Bill’s youngest son left for college in 2012, she became determined to reclaim her hibernating passion for drawing and painting. She began taking every studio class she could at nearby Coos Art Museum… watercolor, acrylic, colored pencil, and mixed media.
Even though none of Elaine’s degrees is in art, she has taken countless classes in drawing, painting, and printmaking throughout her life, so she never claims to be self-taught. A 2015 class at Coos Art Museum entitled “Experimental Drawing,” taught by artist Pat Snyder, changed her life. Freed by that class to move and express rather than merely create figural pictures, she now eagerly paints almost every day. Every one of her paintings is an abstract experiment. Since 2015, she had been painting primarily in acrylic but most recently has been immersing herself in explorations with oil and cold wax medium. All of her paintings in this show were made with mixtures of oil and cold wax medium.
Elaine’s paintings have been juried into three shows at Verum Ultimum Gallery in Portland, Oregon: Abstract Sanctuary 4, 4th Annual Living Mark, and Abstract Catalyst 5. One of her paintings was also juried into Expressions West 2017 at Coos Art Museum. She has had September—October shows at Black Market Gourmet in Coos Bay in 2016, 2017, and 2018. In November and December of 2017, several of Elaine’s paintings, along with paintings by Geralyn Inokuchi and Sharon Jensen, were in an abstract exhibit at the Hawthorne Gallery in Port Orford, Oregon. Six of her paintings are currently hanging in a popular and healthy lunch spot, Noster Kitchen, in Coos Bay. In May 2019, Elaine’s work will be at the Red Door Gallery in Roseburg, Oregon, in an abstract show also featuring works by Geralyn Inokuchi, Sharon Jensen, and Susan Lehman.
