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Michael DixonWinesap, Abstract Impressionism, Oil, 30 x 30, Light, Framed,2009
2009
About the Item
I believe I share with the majority of painters a tremendous love of the abstract stuff of the world that painting addresses: edges, planes, masses, forms, lines, passages, light and shadow. My inspiration for painting comes from direct observation of this “stuff.” The subject for a painting can be anything, but it helps to love the subject and to spend a lot of time with it. Even more important than the choice of subject is to find a relatively quiet, secure, solitary place to work.
I have always loved looking out of windows from a dark room. I love the feeling of the light spilling into the room, particularly on a bright, overcast day; feeling, tactilely, the light on my face; seeing it spread across counters, desk, chairs, the floor. This light feels holy. One of my fondest memories is visiting the Friars’ cells at the Convent of San Marco in Florence. Each cell contains one small window, set into a thick wall, which illuminates the bare room, and one simple, exquisite fresco by Fra Angelico. The simplicity, austerity and holiness of this place are indescribable. It is a feeling I would like to recreate.
Another favorite subject is the view of the city from a rooftop. Last fall I spent several weeks on the rooftops of two buildings in the Fairlie-Poplar section of downtown Atlanta. I worked in oils and watercolors onsite, and then used these small works as springboards for larger paintings in the studio. The work done onsite this time was mostly quite realistic, quite detailed. But with the cityscapes made in the studio, I allowed myself to work from a more intuitive level.
I like to work abstractly, and have done so for quite a few years. When I do, however, the paintings are not pure abstraction; rather they use some very specific subject, in this case the view from the rooftop, as a structure. I suppose, instead of an abstraction, I am after a different kind of realism—one that feels truer to the exhilaration of being on the roof, of sweeping your eye, and your brush, across the vast expanse, of the mass of blocky forms piling up on each other to the horizon, of the vertiginous view of the street far below, sweeping into the distance, of taking in the whole scene all at once.
For me, to paint is to root around in the unconscious, to try to bring unconscious contents to light. This is true no matter what the painting. But I suppose it’s particularly true in the abstractions. I often feel very raw and vulnerable, particularly in the later stages of a painting for this reason. I know very little about what this “rooting around” process means or where it leads. I do know that the whole gamut of emotions go with it, from sublime elation to something close to despair. I try not to attach to either, and count myself incredibly fortunate to be granted the opportunity to engage this pursuit.
For me, to paint is to root around in the unconscious, to try to bring unconscious contents to light. This is true no matter what the painting. But I suppose it’s particularly true in the abstractions. I often feel very raw and vulnerable, particularly in the later stages of a painting for this reason. I know very little about what this “rooting around” process means or where it leads. I do know that the whole gamut of emotions go with it, from sublime elation to something close to despair. I try not to attach to either, and count myself incredibly fortunate to be granted the opportunity to engage this pursuit.
- Creator:Michael Dixon (American)
- Creation Year:2009
- Dimensions:Height: 30 in (76.2 cm)Width: 30 in (76.2 cm)Depth: 1.5 in (3.81 cm)
- Medium:
- Movement & Style:
- Period:
- Condition:
- Gallery Location:Houston, TX
- Reference Number:1stDibs: LU140528579232
Michael Dixon
Excerpted from Debris: Dixon, Hindle and Silverstein at the SOFA by Tom Rhea of The Bloomington Voice
The progression in Michael Dixon’s work moves literally from a closet to the world. The logic of the first few steps is compelling, from the shuttered interior of Summer Studio where the brilliant yellow light pressing at the windows activates the entire painting, to the open window of Banana Still Life to the open air of the final rooftop views of Bloomington, from downtown Sixth Street into the distances of campus buildings. The pull of the outer light, the upper spaces, makes sense for his treatment: the scale of his sweeping stroke wants to describe distance, size and surfaces, not the minutiae of still life. His ambition is the opposite of kitsch; he wants to enlarge, not miniaturize. The raw scrapings of the brush in Margrave Closet make the canvas feel naked, the stroke used up, compared to the fullness of Last Graham Plaza and Bloomington. Dixon gets into issues of ugliness vs. beauty, finish vs. process, order vs. chaos (as does Hindle), and these are not easy issues to resolve. Indeed, these paintings are sometimes difficult to look at, difficult to see. Dixon may not have fully realized his subject yet, or found his color. A painter like Marc Jacobson, for instance, working with similar subjects in his cityscapes, deals more explicitly with ideas of decay, and visual inertia as an occasion for inciting artistic invention. But in the multiplication of form, Dixon makes his paintings about accretion, in the same organic way that cities devour and build themselves up, almost senselessly. There is a sense of rush and motion in his elevated view of the square (even though the streets are empty of traffic), almost like time lapse photography. Large objects like trees become phantasmal and transparent, open to the storefronts behind. After several treatments of the same city view, Dixon becomes assured and familiar enough to pull away the cloth of literal representation, leaving the sense of structure intact. A Construction was painted away from the source, so in that sense is an abstraction, but everything is informed by the same spatial organization, the same descriptive brushwork and color. The brilliant strips of blue at the top still feel like sky. It’s and interesting stepping off point, and makes a smooth transition into the work of Sheila Silverstein.
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