Buddy Bunting

Buddy Bunting: Desert Landscapes, 2024-26
Oct 10 - Dec 5, 2026

Studio e continues its fall program with the second exhibition in its new gallery annex. Buddy Bunting: Desert Landscapes, 2024-26, the gallery's first project with the mid-career, Seattle-based artist, features a focused selection of paintings of correctional and industrial facilities in the Mojave Desert. Selected by independent curator Melissa E. Feldman, the works mark the culmination of nearly thirty years of field research across California prompted by the incarceration of Bunting's childhood friend. Among subdued colors and soft brush strokes, and never larger than 14 x 18 inches, there’s a quietness and reserve within these troubled scenes of orange uniformed inmates in the exercise yard, or a distant firing range overtaken by the vast beauty of the landscape.

The recipient of a 2025 Gottlieb Foundation Artists Grant, Bunting has shown his work at the Tacoma Art Museum, Tacoma, WA, PS122, New York, NY, the Chrysler Museum, Norfolk, VA, and in Seattle at G. Gibson Gallery and Prole Drift, among other venues. His work has been written about by Jen Graves, Regina Hackett, Erin Langner, Fionn Meade, and Jerry Saltz, Bunting holds a B.F.A. from the Maryland Institute College of Art (1986) and an M.F.A. from Boston University (1988). Originally from coastal Maryland, the artist moved to Seattle in 1997.