Teen art prodigy comes to Los Gatos
An after-school art class was the beginning
By Sandy Sims
Amanda "Mandi" Dunbar is pretty, articulate, poised and loving--a normal 17-year-old girl who lives just outside Dallas, Texas, with her parents and younger sister, Meaghan. She is a little remarkable in one respect: her paintings are turning heads in the international art world.
In fact, her work sells for more than some people make in a whole year. What's even more remarkable is that Dunbar had never even touched a paintbrush until she was 13.
Since then, her reputation as a world-class painter has spread quickly. She's been on the Oprah Winfrey show twice. Her paintings hang in galleries from New York to California and many places in between. She's been written up in national magazines and newspapers and even exhibited her work in the Trump Towers.
People who see her paintings want them.
Los Gatans will get a chance to see Dunbar's work and meet her in person during a reception at the Virtual Gallery, 105 N. Santa Cruz Ave., on June 10. The gallery is also hosting a charity benefit, with some of the evening's proceeds going to the Art Docents of Los Gatos. The volunteers bring art education and appreciation into Los Gatos Union School District classrooms. A few of Dunbar's paintings are already on exhibit at the gallery.
Dunbar's celebrity has been no less than a remarkable dream. It started with an after-school art class in middle school. Until then, Dunbar's art amounted to stick figures. She wasn't even a doodler.
"I just went to the after-school class for a place to hang out," Dunbar said in a telephone interview.
Her middle school teacher handed her a brush, a canvas and palette of paint and said, "let's see what you can do." When she finished, the teacher was stunned at what she had painted. He asked her to do another, and then said, "We have to talk to your parents." Dunbar says she was surprised at his reaction. "I guess I was lost in the process. I was just having fun and didn't know how good it was."
Her painting process is something all creative people dream of. "The part of my brain that worries shuts off. Something peaceful comes over me, kind of like a meditation," Dunbar says. She lets her arm go, and it flows.
"I don't think to myself, 'Oh I need some red here or some blue there.' I just get real quiet inside," adds Dunbar, who says angels are painting through her. "I'm just an instrument."
Her paintings are now being compared to Auguste Renoir and Norman Rockwell. Although Dunbar's only training has been in high school, her styles include French Impressionism, American Expressionism and Abstract. Her subjects range from children, mothers with children, lovers and jazz musicians to flowers.
Before her first art class, Dunbar had no interest in looking at art or in other painters. After she began painting, her mother took her to a Renoir showing.
"He paints just like me," she told her mother.
"No, you paint just like him," her mother said. But Dunbar felt a validation and connection as a real painter when she saw Renoir's work. She says even the characters in the paintings felt familiar to her.
She also felt hope for her future work. "I grew up thinking that painters had no worth, were poor. I realized I could make a living at this," she says. With some of her paintings fetching up to $35,000, she just might be right.
Since that first day in middle school, painting has been the center of Dunbar's life. She now has her own studio at home, built by her parents, and she works five to eight hours each day in the summer and one or two a day during the school year. "I can't paint fast enough to keep up with the demand," she says.
The media is calling her and snapping her pictures, and she's traveling to places she's never been. "It's awesome!" Dunbar says. "I can't believe I went on the Oprah show."
She feels her talent is a gift, and she's generous with it. For instance, Dunbar and another child prodigy, 13-year-old Welsh soprano Charlotte Church, whom Dunbar met on the Oprah show, raised $100,000 for Oprah's charities. "Oprah cried," Dunbar says, "and that meant a lot to me. I love to make people happy and to touch them."
Dunbar wants to protect her gift and remain self-taught. But when she took an art history class in school, she says, "It changed my life." It opened her eyes to see the power artists have to change things. "It's awesome to think of making my living as an artist."
This fall, Dunbar plans to attend Southern Methodist University in Dallas to study art history.
Amanda Dunbar will be appearing at a Gala Charity Reception at the Virtual Gallery on Saturday, June 10, from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. Tickets are $75 per person. For more information, call 408.399.3456.
Los Gatos, California Since 1881
Amanda Dunbar has been wowing art collectors in her very brief career as an artist. She'll be at the Virtual Gallery on June 10.
