Biography from a third party submitted on 05/17/2009:
| Peter Dickison , a native of Rhode Island, first began to paint
pictures of Newport in his teens. His artistic training with his
study of painting at the Swain School of Design in New Bedford,
Massachusetts, where he earned a BFA degree in 1982. There, David L.
Smith, a former student of the German abstract artist and teacher Hans
Hoffman in the 1950’s, and Severin Haines, himself a Swain graduate,
were both strong influences in Peter’s early artistic development.
The teaching at Swain focused on drawing and painting the figure in the
life studio and studying the great works of art history. Of his
study at Swain, Dickison explains, “I wasn’t taught so much how to
render an object in paint, but rather to recognize the experience of
seeing it and translate that seeing to a canvas. First I
attempted to understand the world around me visually, and only then I
searched for my artistic voice in that world.”
After Swain, Dickison moved to New York City to attend the Parson’s
School of Design Graduate Program in Painting. There he worked
extensively from the model and studied with Paul Resika and Leland
Bell, both of whom were also influenced by Hans Hoffman. Dickison
found new sources of inspiration while frequently visiting the great
paintings housed in the city’s museums.
From 1983-86, Dickison was a studio assistant to the artist Nell
Blaine (1922-1996) and he traveled with her between New York City and
Gloucester, Massachusetts, including a painting trip to Austria,
Switzerland and Italy. Ms. Blaine’s study with Hans Hoffman had
influenced her early paintings, and the influence of Hoffman and jazz
music in her work was part of the dialogue that developed between her
and young Dickison.
“I was painting with a limited palette comprised mainly of earth
pigments, greens and blue. Nell was using forty colors on her
palette - she didn’t think she should limit anything. She cajoled
me to explore a more pure use of color, but I wanted my own voice and
was resistant. I have come to use color with greater resonance and
tension than I did then, and she may well have had an influence.”
Dickison spent a six-month sojourn in Provence, France, in 1989 to
work with the Cleveland Institute of Art in Lacoste. There he assisted
drawing professor Leonard Stokes, taught landscape and figure drawing,
and painted prolifically in the landscape. The environment and
culture of Provence made such an impression upon his work that he has
periodically returned to France to further absorb its influence.
For the next twelve years he lived in the Hudson River Valley north
of New York City and established a studio where he began to create a
new type of image. The earlier years of figure study and a desire
to paint about human activity came together with his understanding of
the landscape. A series of paintings and drawings of human
figures that merge with the natural forms about them was the result,
while the birth of his first child in 1999 inspired a familial quality
to the figure groups in these works.
Dickison’s affiliation with a New York gallery led to two solo
exhibitions: in Soho in 2000, and Chelsea in 2002. The latter
show prompted reviewer Thomas Disch to acclaim Dickison as “the genuine
article, a painter Cezanne himself would have paused to admire.”
Dickison returned to Newport, Rhode Island in 2003. He paints
in his studio in the heart of the city’s historic district where he
began painting. Dickison is on the faculty of the Newport Art
Museum.
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