Carnivalesque scenes of American nightlife from a painter who called Times Square her home
Chicago-born, New York-based artist Jane Dickson (born 1952), makes paintings and drawings that explore the psychogeography of American culture, focusing primarily on New York's Times Square, where she lived for nearly 30 years. She participated in legendary artist collectives such as Fashion Moda, Collaborative Projects Inc. and Group Material. Working figuratively from her own photographic snapshots, Dickson portrays strip clubs, diners, motels and sex workers and their seemingly straight-laced foils: suburban homes, driveways and businessmen. Using oils and acrylic on canvas and linen alongside a range of atypical surfaces such as vinyl, felt, astroturf and sandpaper, she achieves impressionistic textures that often blur her subjects in hazes of neon and darkness. This first comprehensive monograph of her work includes a 1996 essay-cum-manifesto by Dickson, and new essays by Shannon Mattern, Daniel S. Palmer, Lucy Sante and Yasmin Ramirez.