Dexter Dalwood

Dalwood’s paintings typically depict imagined and constructed interiors or landscapes that act as memorials or descriptions of various historic people, places or moments. Some paintings operate as portraits of people who populate our shared cultural memory such as famous writers and artists, and most recent works have drawn on an idea of History Painting.

His paintings initially start out as small collages where he can assemble compositions from cut up magazines and art history books, creating abrupt changes in surface and image. “It seemed to open up all sorts of possibilities within my painting, most importantly the opportunity to bring together a range of things I was interested in.”

p.19 Kurt Cobain’s Greenhouse, 2000

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In this piece, I find it interesting how his collage has been transferred into painting. You can see how Dalwood has made artistic decisions such as changing certain colours, which I think is due to the nature of found images and the attitudes when dealing with imagery, that you have to deal with what you have got and make the most of it. The collages are really just for composition, so he knows how to set out a painting.

p.20 Nixon’s Departure, 2001

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In this piece, you can see the process he went through to make the end product which is the painting. He started off with the collage for composition, then made a sketch and finally painted. I find it interesting in this painting how he didn’t change many if any of the elements. Previously we have seen he changed the colour palette, whereas here, the painting is not coherent, and he has kept the contrasting colours of the same image created by the collage.

 p107 Café Deutschland, 2000