Carl Dixon Paintings

Mississippi-born Carl Dixon is a self-taught artist. A teacher spotted Dixon’s talent when he was the first black student to take an art course in his newly integrated high school. Dixon decided to get vocational training as a brick mason, but he returned to art-making, when his childhood friend, Ben Oliver, persuaded him to try his hand at the wood carving on a router machine. The two aspiring artisans began making decorative address signs but soon moved on to bas-relief portraits of Michael Jackson, Prinz, and other black pop cultural icons for neighborhood kids. (Carl made an image in this style of my father, Andy the Prayer Warrior.) Dixon was inspired to create carved wood paintings on biblical themes by a Sunday School teacher who used cardboard cut-outs as visual aids. Dixon begins each piece by blocking out his subject on plywood panels (mostly made from birch), using a T-square, “just like I was drawing a house plan.” Then, he carves out the areas he wants in relief with a router machine or the occasional hand tool, painting in the details of his pictures with water-based colors and acrylics. He finishes things off with a touch of glitter and a coat of lacquer. Dixon likes to turn the outer edges of his panels into decorative frames with Bible references.