About

Biography

Born in Northern Ireland in 1956, Rodney Dickson grew up during the period of social and political unrest known as 'The Troubles.' At the age of 23 he left Northern Ireland to study art in Liverpool Art School. Drawing and painting since childhood, he knew on his first day of college that he would be an artist and has continued since then.

"Growing up during The Troubles affected all of us who survived those times. Many people developed a critical view of society, religion and politics in general. In my case, I found the freedom to express myself as an artist, an outsider."

Critical Review

I have known Rodney Dickson and his work since he was a raw, young art student at Liverpool, fresh from what was then a troubled and often violent Northern Ireland. I think of him now, as I did then, as "driven", driven by an insatiable desire for art, making, looking, studying, talking.

Based now, and for many years, in Brooklyn N.Y., he is also an inveterate traveller. His work and curiosity in cultures other than his own have led him to the East and Far East, India, mainland China, Taiwan, Cambodia and Vietnam, in the West to Devon U.K., Amsterdam, Berlin and Iceland and probably more, - but all have had an impact on his work and his belief in a shared human experience.

I regard him primarily as a painter, as I believe he does himself, but this should not distract from his exciting forays into installation, assemblage, collage and printmaking, his continuous need to experiment and to surprise himself.

In recent years he has concentrated almost exclusively on drawing and painting. It has been said elsewhere that ultimately all painting is a self portrait, evident, I believe in all of Rodney’s work, the passages of anger and frustration, insight, invention, impulse and contemplation, yet all underpinned by a rigorous intellect which allows him no evasion.

He is absorbed in the physical properties and language of paint, paint as a metaphor for his deepest feelings. He works often on a large but human scale over which he can reach at arm’s length keeping the paint moving with a fluidity which seeks to equate with that of Nature itself, shifting seasons, light and weather. Essentially much of this work takes place in the studio, paintings as much about the act of painting as anything else and dependant on an impressive quantity of materials. Yet from time to time Rodney works outside in extremes of weather and light, experiences which must feed indirectly into the studio work without any tendency to direct representation while inevitably merging with the artist’s inner landscape.

Parallel to this approach has been a long series of overtly descriptive images of the human figure going back to his early Liverpool career and haunting images of the tragic snooker player Alex "Hurricane" Higgins with whom he shared a background, early life and experiences in Northern Ireland. More recently we see an ongoing series of "portraits" based on photographs supplied by friends and acquaintances, long, white robed, vertical figures which concentrate fiercely on the eyes, not least because most are masked reflecting the Covid years. If all we knew of Rodney Dickson was this remarkable series it would still mark him as a painter of distinction.

Throughout his career Rodney’s work has been underpinned by the practice of drawing as often as not from life, including drawings and sometimes paintings of those of his friends with the patience or endurance to sit for him. I think that all his drawings are made for himself, not the viewer, and are an essential part of his diet.

This is a rare artist, a painter of substance, brave, adventurous and wholly committed, an artist who has produced memorable images in a range of media and will no doubt continue to do so. He and I have exchanged images and thoughts across the years, a correspondence which has enlivened my advancing years. I hope to live to see his work reach an ever widening public as it certainly will and most certainly deserves.

Mike Knowles,
Anglesey 23/07/21.