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Jane Dickson, Study for Liquors Sally’s Hideaway, 2021

Jane Dickson

B. 1952, Chicago. Lives and works in New York.

A painter with decades of experience and a practice deeply rooted in New York, Jane Dickson mines quintessential American scenes for inspiration, uncovering the seedy, almost threatening nature of subjects ranging from peep shows and casinos to suburban homes and grocery stores. Dickson is featured in this year’s Whitney Biennial, on view through September 5th, and was the subject of a recent solo show, “99¢ Dreams,” at James Fuentes in New York.

Though tending to favor simple subjects and scenes, Dickson’s work contains a grand sense of narrative—of tumult, anguish, or isolation experienced just out of frame or behind a closed door. Her color palette ratchets up the tension by balancing moody blue and funereal black hues with shades of electric orange and lusty red. Adding a further layer of interest to these pieces is her use of nontraditional surfaces such as AstroTurf, felt, sandpaper, and carpet.

Dickson received a BA from Harvard University and a studio diploma from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Her work has been shown in solo and group exhibitions at Creative Time, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Marlborough Gallery, and Brooke Alexander Gallery, among others. Her paintings are held in both museum and corporate collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum, the Brooklyn Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery, Forbes, and J.P. Morgan Chase.