JAN DICKEY
Jan Dickey is a painter based in Brooklyn, NY. He earned an MFA in Studio Art from the University of Hawaii at Manoa (Honolulu, HI) in 2007, and a BFA in 2009 from the University of Delaware (Newark, DE). Dickey has attended numerous artist residencies including the Sam and Adele Golden Foundation for the Arts in New Berlin, NY (2023); ARTnSHELTER in Tokyo, Japan (2019); the Kimmel Harding Nelson Art Center in Nebraska City, NE (2018); and the Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, VT (2017). His spring 2023 solo exhibition, “Passing Through,” held at D.D.D.D. (New York, NY) was reviewed in “Two Coats of Paint” under the title “Jan Dickey: Both Sides Now.” In 2024, he curated a group exhibition at D.D.D.D. (New York, NY), titled “The Corner Show,” and is presenting a site-responsive installation of paintings at Bob’s Gallery (Brooklyn, NY), titled “The Generations.”
In my work, paint is not merely a substance but a living entity, full of vitality. I blend hand-ground pigments with natural binders such as egg, oil, and assorted glues, both animal and plant-dervied. My process seeks a symbiotic relationship with paint, yielding layered compositions that possess a non-artificial quality, revealing cracks and peels reminiscent of nature’s own patterns.
I think of composing a painting as the artificial act of controlling and possessing space. Compositions are how we carve up the raw, untamed physicality of space and earth-based matter into something that can be understood and navigated by the human mind. I embrace this essential fact of composition but also seek to disrupt it by bringing uncertain factors-like the movement of sunlight-and ungovernable mixtures of paint into the process.
