Alice Dustin is an oil painter who delights in color and the way oil paint can be put down with a brush. Leigh Gustafson of Artists’ House Gallery of Philadelphia said Dustin’s “enthusiasm comes out of her brush stroke. She has a spontaneous…juicy brush stroke.” “She’s not afraid to paint. With just a few brush strokes, a simple bowl comes alive,” says Larry Toro of Toro Gallery in Huntingdon Valley. Alice Dustin is known for her impressionistic style, a natural result of alla prima painting, done in or outdoors reacting to the subject at hand.

Dustin’s themes range from still life to land or cityscape and include the figure and the animal world. Alice Dustin’s professional career began with languages and teaching. She holds an MAT from Harvard and a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania. For many years she taught French and then English as a second language from the university level to preschool, in public and private settings. She is the mother of two grown children and when they no longer needed her time, she picked up a life-long love. In 1997 she began painting in and out of class. Considered a self-taught artist, she studied with several Philadelphia artists: John Devlieger, Stan Bielen, Giovanni Cassedei, Al Gury, and Christine Lafuente. Now she herself teaches oil painting with Main Line School Night.

Alice Dustin began to show her work in 1999 and has since won many awards including the Juror’s Award at the Wayne National Juried Art Show in 2003, First Second, and Purchase Award at Rittenhouse Square (2000,2002,2003), the Fred & Naomi Hazell Award at the Fleisher Art Memorial (2000), and the Friends Award of the Tri-States Artist Equity Exhibit in 2001 among others. She has had numerous solo and two person shows in local galleries and art center sponsored exhibits. She shows with galleries in the Philadelphia area as well as in New York, Delaware, and Massachusetts.

Alice Dustin has chosen her medium to suit her talents and personality. She is an enthusiastic and spontaneous person and finds the qualities of oil paint suit her well. She enjoys the creamy consistency of oils which she applies to a prepared surface that allows for a fluid movement of the paint. Doing a loose under-painting she grounds her _expression in a clear and dramatic sense of light and dark. From there she is free to respond to color and to make the brush stroke give life to her work. She appreciates the understated and ultimately finds harmony in simple themes.