October 9, 2025
1. Jane Dickson’s “Study of Cocktails” (1984)
The artist Jane Dickson arrived in New York in 1977, one year after graduating from Harvard with a degree in visual studies. Her second job was programming Times Square’s first Spectacolor billboard, which had computerized light . The view from her studio on 42nd Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenues inspired some of her early work, which included both photography and painting. Her loose studies in oil stick on black paper are particularly entrancing to Tyler, who marvels at the contrast Dickson achieves between the negative space of the black paper and the nearly incandescent neon signs, crowds in motion and wet pavement. “She’s ill,” Tyler says. “Most folks get white paper and then color things black. She would color around the black. The fact that your mind can work like that is crazy to me. All her work has this glow to it.”
