Kathi Pearson Dunn is an impressionist pastel painter who creates from her studios in Hayward WI and Tubac AZ. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Advertising Design with an emphasis on graphic design.

For 15 years she was a professional potter in Colorado and New Mexico before returning to graphic design in 1985 when she ran a full-service ad agency and design firm which she closed in 2022 to focus on her painting. Along each career path, she has never veered from her love of design, illustration and painting, which are now all infused in her pastel paintings.

“I’d always been attracted to pastel paintings in museums and galleries without understanding the wonder and complexity of the process — to work with raw pigment as the masters did long ago. I now see the natural world around me as paintings waiting to be born and it is my joy to reinterpret those images through my art. On sanded paper, I use a variety of techniques including underpainting with acrylic, watercolor or alcohol wash and I then build layers of pastel, transforming colors and shapes into my own vision.”