Pauline West
  • Journal
  • Candlemoth
  • After Ice
  • Contact

New Artist Profile up for Redux Contemporary Art Center

5/11/2014

 
Picture
“I’ve always painted with a lot of texture, but I didn’t start splatter painting until I moved here.  This is my first studio that isn’t also a kitchen or a bedroom,” Dan Dickey says.   We’re at the Tivoli, standing in his studio, where every wall is shielded with color-ribboned canvases.  His grandfather’s mower hulks in the center of the room, swizzled with yellow, orange, purple, white and pale-blue.

“I brought it down from Virginia, but when it wouldn’t start, I decided to cover it in paint.”  With a round, fox-colored beard, and his way of rooting himself where he stands, unflappably focused in flip flops and board shorts, hands firmly in his pockets, Dickey has the distilled presence of a disciplined man.

He shows me how he dips the blunt end of a brush into a paint can and uses it to make a controlled drip over the canvas.

“Sometimes I put a dab of paint here and here, you know, and then I roll the middle of the brush through it.”  He indicated a wandering swath and then, looking at the long, paint-mottled brush in his hand, Dickey said, “I like this one.  I think I might put it up on a long, narrow canvas, just all by itself.  It has a pop.”

“Yeah, it does.”  It’s warm, breezeless in the room, and I pluck at my shirt, absorbed in his paintings.

He smiled.  “A lot of sweat goes into these.  Pretty soon it’ll get too hot to work in here at all, but I usually paint a month on, a month off.  So it’s all right.”

“What’s it like in the winter?”

“Well, it’s cold.”  He shrugged, indifferent.  “I like to work at night.  This canvas, here?  I got up to the crow’s nest up there, all whiskey drunk, and threw the paint down from there.”  The result was thick, ridged tributaries like dried sediment.

I looked around at the other studios.  White drapes swaying from rafters, ladders to nowhere, propped up against the walls.  Large, industrial furniture slouched in the corners, rusting comfortably; the warehouse was full of coves where artists could work deeply, losing themselves in process.

“Yeah,” I said, “and in places like this, alone in it at night?  You’re aware of space in a way you can’t be when there’s people in it...”


You can check out the rest of the article here.... meanwhile...

Picture
Dan Dickey's whisky incident.

Comments are closed.

    Pauline West

    ​Pauline West's first novel, EVENING’S LAND, is winner of the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation Award and recipient of the Carol Marie Smith Memorial Scholarship for the NOEPE Center of Literary Arts.  

    West's writing has been shortlisted for The International Aeon Award, and featured in International School Leader Magazine, Reddit’s NoSleep channel, The Art Mag and The Sierra Nevada Review.

    Pauline West's books on Goodreads
    Candlemoth: A Holy City Romance Candlemoth: A Holy City Romance
    reviews: 15
    ratings: 27 (avg rating 4.04)

    Evening's Land Evening's Land
    reviews: 20
    ratings: 24 (avg rating 3.46)

    Candlemoth Volume 2: How To Spend It Candlemoth Volume 2: How To Spend It
    reviews: 7
    ratings: 10 (avg rating 4.40)

    Candlemoth Book 3: A Twist of Fate Candlemoth Book 3: A Twist of Fate
    reviews: 3
    ratings: 6 (avg rating 4.17)

    Stalker: A Gothic Thriller Stalker: A Gothic Thriller
    reviews: 3
    ratings: 4 (avg rating 4.25)

    Categories

    All
    All Babes Are Wolves
    Astra
    Candlemoth: A Holy City Romance
    Children: The Kids Are Not All Right
    Evening's Land
    Illustrations
    Instagram
    Journal
    Linocuts
    Loveliness
    Meditation
    Oddities
    On Writing
    Poetry
    Redux
    Savages
    Short Stories
    Stalker A Gothic Thriller
    Stalker: An Erotic Horror Story

    Archives

    December 2019
    June 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    August 2018
    June 2018
    February 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    August 2016
    June 2016
    January 2016
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.