For those who social media, Newport Art Museum can be followed and liked and all sorts of fun esocial stuff on facebook. (No little “f” logo here!) “Faculty Focus”, my show with Lisa May is there, as is art class info, all the exhibitions, news and events at the museum. If you would rather visit in person, great! See the show, on view until May 6, 2012.
"Faculty Focus: Peter Dickison and Lisa May" at Newport Art Museum
That’s Trish modeling in my Portrait With a Hat class on the cover of the latest class brochure for Newport Art Museum classes.
I set up a boudoir to provide a setting for the vintage silk robe and pants Trish brought, and she styled her hair to complete the pose. Trish is great fun to work with!
The drawing I did of the pose is here.
The Spring 2012 Brochure featuring Trish in my "Portrait With a Hat" class.
"Study for The Source II" charcoal, 29x20 cm, 2012.
The painting of this title is currently part of my two person exhibition at Newport Art Museum, “Faculty Focus: Peter Dickison and Lisa May.” It was recently completed, though actually begun more than a year earlier. In understanding the connection of the two figures and reworking the left one completely to that end, I resorted to a frequent exercise of mine in the studio: drawing a copy of the painting. It clarifies the picture for me, and gives me freedom to quickly remake aspects of it.
Here, the figure to the left has dipped a vessel of water from the source and offers it to the other; a woman offers a drink from the source to the man. The water can be seen as analogous to sustenance, love, life, the eternal flow of humanity through the world (nature). Now, in religious contexts, the symbolic cleansing of water is not usually given from the hand of a woman, so my setting can be seen as unorthodox in that sense.
I didn’t set out to be so controversial, however. I was thinking more of companions looking out for one another in Nature. And this study uncovered the relationship I was looking for in the painting. Look for it in the show at Newport Art Museum, in Newport, RI. Through May 6, 2012.
The Newport Art Museum newsletter is out and features “Faculty Focus: Peter Dickison and Lisa May”. The two person show will open March 30, from 5 -7 PM, and will run through May 6. The connections to mythology that our work shares will be highlighted, with many of my landscape narratives and a few plein air landscape paintings included. Come check it out, and look for me there on opening night!
Wishing a happy 100th birthday to the Newport Art Museum in 2012, its centennial year!
Artist folks are selecting canvases and getting ready for WET PAINT, the annual artist led fundraiser at Newport Art Museum. We go outdoors to paint, and bring back the wet paintings to the museum for a silent auction. Yours truly will be out there painting and then back inside to help install all the artworks, usually 300 pieces or so! Check out the Museum on facebook for more..
Check back at this post for my WET PAINT painting update.
Over 400 works this year- a record! Here is my painting that went to the effort to raise funds for the Newport Art Museum’s arts and educational programs. It was done at Norman Bird Sanctuary, in the front yard of the farmhouse there. I titled it “Mabel’s Yard.”
"Mabel's Yard", oil on canvas, 61x46 cm, 2011.
"Trinity Church, Newport", oil on canvas, 2007.