Rusty Kinnunen

Rusty Kinnunen is an award-winning painter and printmaker living in Rockport, Massachusetts. He studied painting at Massachusetts College of Art and Design, graduating in 2004 with a BFA. In 2012, along with his wife, he founded Rusty & Ingrid Screen Prints, which has grown into a successful gallery selling their own hand made fine art silkscreen prints. Recently, Rusty took the first-place prize at the Cape Ann Plein Air 2025 festival for his painting Harbor Labyrinth.

Throughout his life, Rusty has continually turned to plein air painting to maintain his creativity, and the appeal for him is an intuitive connection to a moment in time and to a particular point of view. His subject matter includes everyday scenes around coastal New England, as well as scenes around the home. When painting, he looks for interesting light, geometry, and a hint of a story. Light motivates the scene, livens the colors and sets the moment in time. Geometry refers to finding interesting shapes in a scene as well as an interesting composition. Most often the narrative element is evidence of time passing, or something that people have left behind, inviting the viewer to contemplate the story of the scene.