Most people keep original pictures for nostalgic reasons, but Joshua Dildine works with photographs and paints over them on a large scale.
At Lipscomb’s John C. Hutcheson Gallery in the James D. Hughes Center, eight pieces of Dildine’s work are part of the visiting artists program. Dildine is an artist based out of Los Angeles.
Dildine grew up in the California area, and the original influence of art in his life was his grandmother, a water color painter.
“She would babysit me, and she would point into the sky and say ‘what colors do you see in the sky?’, and I would say ‘blue’, and she would say, ‘wrong’ and I would think she’s crazy,” Dildine said.
The art background his grandmother inspired propelled Dildine to pursue his passion in art.
“Having that constant influence throughout my whole life has been amazing, but now that I’m much older and in the contemporary art realms my influence has changed. I look at art and I’m inspired by everything,” Dildine said.
The core of his artwork looks into how society views images.
“I wanted to make it more personal, but also in some ways I wanted to investigate the power of image and photographs,” Dildine said.
Dildine has three base steps to his work: construction, deconstruction and re-construction.
“The construction part is the context that we give images. The meaning behind them. Deconstructive aspect is the act of painting over it and removing that context,” Dildine said. Dildine believes that removing the face of mother on a photograph, the power of it is lost.
The third step, reconstruction, “is fusing painting with photographs more in a community aspect. In a sense that these two working elements working together to make a final piece,” Dildine said.
Dildine’s goal is for people to see much deeper that what a photograph is at face value.
“I want people to look at the image and experience the image for what it is. It’s an image and there’s the aesthetic quality of an image, and I don’t think it’s important for the viewer to see that it’s a family photograph.”
For the opening reception of the gallery earlier this month, Dildine spoke to the crowd of students, teachers, and guests. He said he has enjoyed his experience at Lipscomb and Nashville, and is impressed with the art department.
“From what I’ve seen from the art department, I think it’s fantastic. What you guys are doing here is pretty great.” Dildine said.
Nashville has been a good experience for him as well. “You guys are really nice, everybody in Nashville seems nice. I think that’s your guys MO in Nashville is to be friendly,” Dildine said.
Dildine is a contemporary artist, and Associate Art Professor Rocky Horton wants to continue to bring other contemporary artists in.
“We try to get a variety of things, so we’re real conscience of not having all photography, not having all painting or now having all video, but trying to mix in all these different things here on campus,” Horton said.
To Horton, the John C. Hutcheson Gallery is about more than bringing different art to Lipscomb’s campus.
“We consider it to be a teaching gallery, so we try to bring in the kind of art work that our students can be interested in and excited about and we can teach from,” Horton said.
The line-up following Dildine includes Angela Burks, Ron Lambert and Joshua Bienko.
Dildine’s work will be viewable until Nov. 1.
Picture credit: Whitney Jarreld