Jan Dickey

Statement:

My medium is paint, which I prepare myself from historically researched pigments, plants, bugs and earth-based binders like rabbit skin glue, cellulose glue, casein, egg tempera and oil. I see paint as a living substance and use painting tactics with undetermined outcomes like peeling, cracking and sanding. Such tactics reduce my own authorship, producing texturally complex, and seemingly eroded, surfaces wherein chance physical/chemical processes have played an important part. 

I take the 5-pointed star as my primary subject, and repeat it over and over at different sizes and at shifting angles. The star is a powerful symbol with a slippery, changing meaning from person to person and across time and place. I have spent various periods of time living all around the United States: east coast, west coast, mid-west, the south and on the island of O’ahu. In those experiences I have found my own perspective on the star (and the nation state it represents for me) to be ever-evolving. I am, therefore, looking at the stars and the paintings that contain them as organic beings, living things that breathe the air in the room and mutate over time.

Bio:
Jan received an MFA from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa in 2017 and a BFA from the University of Delaware in 2009. He has had solo exhibitions throughout the United States and internationally in Tokyo, Japan. Jan was a resident artist at ARTnSHELTER (Tokyo, Japan) in 2019, the Kimmel Harding Nelson Arts Center (Nebraska City, NE) in 2018, and the Vermont Studio Center (Johnson, VT) in 2017. In 2020 he curated exhibitions at the Honolulu Museum of Art (Why Are You Painting?) and Studio9D in Chelsea, NY (Another Year in the Republic). In 2021 Jan was included in the Chengdu Biennale (Chengdu, China) special exhibition “Interdependency: Meeting the Universe Halfway” curated by Shulang Zou & He Xi. His work was also recently featured in the International Painting Annual 9 published by Manifest Press (Cincinnati, OH), as well as the I Like Your Work podcast fall 2022 catalog for the “Finding a Memory” exhibition curated by Erika B Hess (Boston, MA). Jan’s studio is located in Brooklyn, NY.