[2] Dunn was an art teacher at the Julia F. Girls' Buhl School in Sharon for over twenty-five years.
Dunn studied painting and illustration at the Carnegie Institute of Technology,[3] and became best known for his impressionist, abstract, and modernist works throughout the tri-state area of Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia.
[6] During 1959 and 1960 three of Dunn's oil paintings won first prize at the Freeland Art Show in Conneaut Lake, PA ("Three Seasons" in 1959 and "The Cove" and "Waiting" in 1960).
[9] He was also a member of the Pennsylvania Impressionists and the New Hope School and is associated with artists from the Carnegie Institute of Technology such as Arthur Watson Sparks, Charles Taylor, and George Sotter.
[9] He also was friends and corresponded with the artist Clyde Singer who was affiliated with the Butler Institute of American Art.
[2] Following this auction the majority of Dunn's paintings which were until then unavailable to the public, virtually his "life's work" according to "The Herald" in Sharon, Pennsylvania,[2] passed into private hands and collections.