Forest Temple Paintings:
Landscapes by Dunya Dianne McPherson
April 6 - May 9
A stark contrast to a world often marked by violence and instability, The Forest Temple Paintings offer a refuge—inviting us to seek comfort, truth, and guidance through nature’s embrace.
Originally painted for the interior walls of her home—designed to be lived in—these canvases bring the surrounding woods indoors, transforming the space into a woodland sanctuary. “They are my divinities. I cling to their intelligence, brilliance, and resilience,” McPherson reflects.
This series of large, vibrant oil-on-canvas panels celebrates trees in all their forms—healthy, fragile, misshapen, cultivated, sapling, and dead alike—as guardians of our soil, our animals, our air, our very breath. Rather than offering a distant, tranquil landscape, McPherson invites immersion. Her perspective surrounds us, sweeps us up, and pulls us into the heart of the forest.
Opening Reception April 6th, 11:30am – 1pm
April 6 – May 9
Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Falmouth
840 Sandwich Rd, East Falmouth, MA 02536
exhibition on view 9 – noon M, W, Th, F
Artist Statement
I think because people know I’m a lifelong dancer, they often remark that my paintings dance. Maybe so, but I paint what I see, and what I truly see is an alive, bubbling, glimmering, singing, magical world that is dancing, and this inspires me. In terms of bringing that onto a canvas, hoping it will breathe and move on the wall, I’m pretty loose with representation. I want more for the piece to find itself and to be strong.
– Dunya Dianne McPherson, Juried Artist
About Dunya Dianne McPherson
Dunya‘s vibrant palette and rich impasto draw us into a weave of motion and immersion. She attributes her ability to ‘receive’ the energy of what she sees then let it fall onto the canvas to her Sufi Dancemeditation practice. Her background as a Juilliard-trained professional dancer and acclaimed choreographer are ever emerging in brushstrokes and composition which glide between Impressionism and Abstraction. Her reverence for nature, woodlands in particular, which she experiences as sacred, illuminate her work. McPherson paints in her Cape Cod home in Woods Hole and her New Mexico wilderness studio.
“These paintings change my breathing. The brushwork awakens sensory connection. ‘Enchanted’ is a luminous dream. ’Wild Irises’ is gorgeous! Texture, depth, viscosity, dimension.”
— Christopher Pilafian, fine artist
