This is a virtual event via Zoom hosted by Pucker Gallery. This event will be recorded and uploaded to our YouTube channel.
Join us Monday, 20 April 2026 at 3:00PM ET for a conversation with Pucker Gallery artist Geoffrey Dunn.
This webinART will give us an opportunity to peer into an artist's sincere admiration for nature through the paintings of Geoffrey Dunn. His unique eye and skill have developed through his career as both a surgeon and an artist.
Together with:
Geoffrey Dunn – Pucker Gallery Artist
Mara Williams - Brattleboro Museum Curator Emerita
Caroline Staller - Gallery Associate and Artist
Dr. Carl Herbert - Gallery Associate
Bernard Pucker – Gallery Director
The exhibition Reverence for Nature will be on view at Pucker Gallery from 2 May through 14 June 2026.
About Our Panelists:
Geoffrey P. Dunn, MD, FACS, is an Emeritus member of the Department of Surgery of UPMC Hamot and former Medical Director of the Palliative Care Consultation Service there. He has been a visiting professor of surgery in India, Great Britain, Canada, China, and Norway. He has pioneered and written extensively about surgical palliative care. Painting has been an important activity in Dunn’s life ever since it was recommended to him at age 13 by his mother when he was confined to quarters for misbehavior at school. Upon graduation from high school, he had a one-person show of his work, earning him the school prize in fine arts. He also received the school’s prize for best historical essay in which he chronicled the development of American landscape painting during the nineteenth century. In college, Dunn majored in religion and minored in fine arts, studying with the Dutch painter Charles Stegeman. Professor Stegeman first suggested to Dunn a career in medicine: “You are a very competent painter and do fabulous work, but I believe your heart is elsewhere. I think you should be a doctor.” Dunn continued to study privately with Andrew Sanders, then after a long hiatus resumed painting during trips to the Georgian Bay region of Ontario, where he was strongly influenced by the Canadian school the Group of Seven. During the late 1990s Dunn recognized a deeper and more spiritual purpose to painting through the inspiration and counsel of Brother Thomas. At that time plein air painting had increasingly become the counterpoint and catharsis for Dunn’s career in palliative care, and later surgical palliative care. Dunn has had solo exhibitions at Pucker Gallery, Glass Growers Gallery in Erie, and the Erie Insurance Group’s gallery. He received an honorable mention from the Salmagundi Art Club in New York where he is a non-resident artist member since 2012.
Mara Williams assumed Emerita status in 2021, after curating exhibits at the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center for thirty-three years. Her area of expertise is modern and contemporary art. Recent solo exhibitions include: Gathering Light: The Art of Stephen Hannock; Wolf Kahn— Landscape of Light; Secrets by Gloria Garfinkel; Andy Warhol—Selections from the Jon Gould Collection. Group shows have included the work of Jean-Michel Basquiat, Janet Fish, Mary Frank, Keith Haring, David Hockney, Maya Lin, James McGarrell, David Nash, Robert Rauschenberg, Ursula von Ridingsvard, Michael Singer, Tseng Kwong Chi, and Barbara Zucker, as well as a host of regional and emerging talent.
Caroline Staller is a ceramic sculptor and educator whose work captures the peaceful beauty of the everyday. She brings to each piece the joy and freedom found from her upbringing spent exploring the New Mexico desert on horseback. She infuses into her tableaus and carvings a sense of peacefulness and reflection found among the quiet and healing nature of the horse. After completing an MFA in ceramics from the University of Missouri under the mentorship of artists Bede Clarke and Joseph Pintz, she has since gone on to teach at multiple locations including Harvard Ceramics. She loves to encourage students to focus on a close conversation with clay through color, texture, and form. Caroline currently works from her home studio and has been joyfully part of the Pucker Gallery webinARTs for the past four years.
Dr. Carl Herbert is a fourth-generation physician whose career has been devoted to helping infertility patients overcome a wide spectrum of obstacles to create their families. Early in his career he participated in the founding of one of the first eIVF centers in the United States. For more than forty years, Dr. Herbert has contributed to the growth and development of assisted reproductive technologies, continually implementing the evolving techniques and optimizing their clinical applications for care. The ambiguity of a socially awkward accolade, “You got me pregnant!”, has become a recurrent reward, both humorous and joyful. By serendipity, Dr. Herbert walked into Pucker Gallery for the first time in 1985 when visiting Boston for a medical conference. From this point on, his nascent interest in art grew under the generous tutelage and encouragement of Mr. Pucker. A close personal friendship evolved as they visited artists and exhibitions around the world; exchanged thoughts on the experience and intrinsic value that art, in all its many forms, can provide individuals and society; and shared writings which illuminated these principles.
Bernie Pucker is the director of Pucker Gallery, which he founded with his wife, Sue, on Boston's historic Newbury Street in 1967. Pucker Gallery represents over fifty artists from around the world, presenting approximately ten exhibitions annually, often paired with artist talks, virtual “WebinARTs,” and Gallery receptions. Bernie is currently a Board Member at the Japan Society, Boston, and the Jewish Publication Society. He also serves on the Leadership Council for Facing History and Ourselves as well as the Artistic Advisory Board for the Terezin Music Foundation. Previously, he has served as President of Solomon Schechter Day School, President of the Newbury Street League, and Board Member for the Friends of Copley Square and The Unity Project, among others. Bernie received his MA in Modern Jewish History from Brandeis University and his BA in History and English Literature from Columbia College.