Her method is ideally suited to her images, for the historical specificities of each of her selected kings is not the primary issue. Emergence is the matter, the rising of the human configuration, of our own configuration, out of the blank of the unconfigured dark. Her manipulation of light itself, her building of the image in the glare of reflected illumination, the image of king after king surrounding you on all the gallery’s walls, coming at you on all sides, shining in the air, is an enhancement of the symbolic import of the king. It is the emergence of knowledge from mystery, the emergence of light from the darkness, the emergence of mind from unknowing. Light as a symbol in itself signifies the emergence of awareness from the unconscious, and it is not uneventful that King Louis XIV, the Sun King, has been included in the array. The king as sun, aglow in the gallery field.

And just as the personal identities of the kings is not the principal issue, neither are the specifics of their moral statures, the actions they committed that culled Gunderson’s admiration. It is moral stature itself that is at the core of the symbol of the king, for the moral component is the culmination of the maturing of the psyche and the achievement of self-possession. It is not the adoption of any one moral code that is the moment of distinction, but the acquisition of the capacity to devise a moral code. The capacity for personal choice, the meaning of self-possession, is itself meaningless without a set of standards to guide the choices one makes, and it is meaningless again if the standards are borrowed, are mere obedience. In the end, the king signifies the integrity of the mind, for the king is dependent on nothing, everything depends on the king. As an act of the imagination, the image of the king is the image of personal independence, and self command.

Personal independence is also the direct implication of Gunderson’s incised black-on-black style, for uniqueness of means is the ultimate act of integrity for an artist. Having devised a manner of extracting the human figure from the dark, it is no surprise that Gunderson found her way to this symbol. What is surprising is the impression, a quality of experience that cannot be found elsewhere, for no one else paints like this. Hers is an art that has achieved its maturity.