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ALLIE REGAN DICKERSON
CV allierdickerson.com (website), @allie.regan.dickerson (instagram), 817.602.5850 (phone) ART EDUCATION MFA /studio art, Texas Christian University, 2014 BFA/ painting/graphic design, University of Texas at Arlington, 1993 3 year studio art course work toward BFA completed at Stony Brook University, New York ART FAIR Crystal Bridges Museum, Bentonville, Arkansas, 2025 RESIDENCIES The New York Academy of Art, summer, 2025 Gallery of Dreams, Art-In-Residence selected artist, 2024 PUBLICATIONS New American Painting, Issue #108 Point of View, MFA thesis, TCU EXHIBITIONS Fort Works Art, The Marks We Make (Group Exhibition) Fort Worth, Texas, 2026 New York Academy of Art, (Group Exhibition) New York, July, 2025 Fort Works Art, This Is How We Remember (Solo Exhibition) Fort Worth, Texas, April, 2024 Fort Works Art, (Group Exhibition) Fort Worth, Texas, 2024 Artspace 111, Renewal, 3 women show, Fort Worth, Texas Spring Gallery Night Group Show, Artspace 111, Fort Worth, Texas Presents, Prints and Paintings, Artspace 111, Fort Worth, Texas Chelsea International Fine Art Competition (International Group Exhibition), Agora Gallery, New York Juror, Megan Fontanella, Assistant Curator, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York Small Works Show (Group Exhibition), National Association of Women Artists, New York Annual Long Island Artists 32nd Juried Exhibition (Group Exhibition), Heckscher Museum of Art, Long Island, New York Hunting Art Prize, finalist (2xs) (Group Exhibition), Houston, Texas New Crop, 500X Gallery (Group Exhibition), Dallas, Texas - Juror, Barry Whistler, Barry Whistler Gallery, Dallas The Hand That Feeds Me: TCU/MFA/500X (Group Exhibition); 500X Gallery, Dallas, Texas Launch Party HOMECOMING! Committee Collaborative Exhibition; 2525 Weisenberger Street, Fort Worth, Texas Transmission (2xs) (Group Exhibition); Fort Worth Contemporary Arts,Fort Worth, Texas The Panel Exhibits (Group Exhibition), Fort Worth Contemporary Arts, Fort Worth, Texas Preservation is the Art of the City (Group Exhibition), Fort Worth Community Arts Center, Fort Worth, Texas (award winner) Best of the Biennial (Group Exhibition), Fort Worth Community Arts Center, Fort Worth, Texas The Goddess Within (Solo Exhibition), Fort Worth library gallery, Fort Worth, Texas Her Story, Fort Worth library gallery (Solo Exhibition), Fort Worth, Texas In My Life (Solo Exhibition), Fort Worth library gallery, Fort Worth, Texas Pastel Society of the Southwest Juried Competition (2xs), Group Exhibition), Dallas, Texas (award winner) GALLERY HISTORY Fort Works Art Gallery, Dallas, Texas ArtSpace 111, Fort Worth, Texas Fort Worth Contemporary Art Gallery, TCU, Fort Worth, Texas Ginger Fox Gallery, Dallas, Texas Evelyn Siegel Gallery, Fort Worth, Texas 500X, Dallas, Texas Gallery North, Long Island, New York Ginger Fox Gallery, Fort Worth ARTIST STATEMENT: COLLATERAL BEAUTY One day we were. And then one day I was full of grief and at a memorial service. There was no context to this event. There had been a rhythm to our lives. And then there wasn’t. And everything felt unfamiliar. There were days when the silence in the house felt so loud. It drove me outdoors where I felt I could breathe. I would walk the lake. At the start of my walk there was an area of thick plant life just before glimpsing the lake around the bend. There, I would escape from my thoughts when a sound, a flutter, a rustle or movement out of the side of my eye caught my attention—a beautiful egret moving among the trees at the lake. Its colors were so similar to its environment that it could barely be seen except for one bright spot of color. And gradually... over time... I became more present. I would start my walks looking to the left and to the right instead of looking down the path. I became familiar with particular bird calls. The red-winged blackbird would sometimes be sitting on the railing of the first lake bridge. I would observe things I hadn’t seen before. I brought scissors and clipped off branches. After carrying them home I would set them on the counter and examine them. I took photos of the plant life around me. I wasn’t interested in the names of the plants. I was interested in how they were built. I saw that their complexity was derived from the repetition of one form. The leaves on one stem, though the same form, weren’t exactly the same. Sometimes one was curled, frayed or damaged. The sizes varied. I looked at how branches differed. Roots in the ground at my feet had me thinking of words like rootless and rooted. I saw sense in nature’s metaphorical example. The natural order is where collateral damage and collateral beauty coexist. I don’t know exactly how clay happened. I had done a little bit of clay work during my time in the MFA program when focusing primarily on paint. But I hadn’t touched it since. I think it became interesting again because clay seemed the way to make plants. This moving into clay has become a turning point. I am able to satisfy quite naturally my attachment to order, my love of intricacy and specificity, utilizing the properties that are inherent in clay. Each piece is constructed by hand individually. Sometimes I will just move the clay in my hand and have a leaf. Importance is placed on the form and the process of making. At times as in life, things break, are created by happenstance or... are what they should be. Intuitively, I adhere pieces one at a time to a board until the work feels complete. I make the shapes in multiples moving from the simple to the more complex. I burn the clay to achieve various shades from white to black. When finished, each clay painting morphs, impacted by light and space, and becomes what it will in response to its environment and its viewer. Conversations of interest: single versus the whole, repetition and discontinuation, brokenness and renewal, beauty and loss of beauty, separate versus connected, fragility and strength. ARTIST STATEMENT: GRIEF AND PRAISE SERIES Two weeks before my husband died, we saw a dead bird on the ground. I was fascinated with it. I could see all of nature’s intricate details that one can’t see from afar or when it is in flight. I thought it was beautiful. My husband was horrified and looked away from it. I took a picture of that bird. I felt compelled to paint it a few days after death and grief became a part of my life. Many years later I came across a book titled “The Smell of Rain on Dust.” The author, Martín Prechtel, shares teachings based on his understanding of Maya spirituality and language. In the book he says, “Grief and Praise are one word in the Tzutujil Maya language. When you are grieving for the thing you got—it is praise, when you are praising for the thing you lost—it is called grief. It is all mixed in there and is not separated.” This book helped me look at death and see the beauty in being alive. I resurrected the bird painting I had done years before and with new eyes created the grief and praise series. The paintings depict nature with its flowers and birds as a metaphore for grief and praise. If grief and praise is the same thing, then if we try to pull out the weeds of grief, than we’re pulling out the flowers of praise as well. And the garden is left bare. “Laughing and weeping live in the same house,” says Prechtel, “When you praise something it lives. When you don’t grieve it, it never lived.” ARTIST STATEMENT: MILLER PLACE POND SERIES; POINT OF VIEW In the Pond series I used my image as a vehicle in the paintings.I pose for photographs that would serve as a source for the paintings. I place myself into the memory/situation and became both the subject and the observer. I am an actor playing a part. This enables me to see the work through both objective and subjective eyes. Before I begin painting, the first phase of the work involves collecting objects, materials and clothing. Harry Broudy, a philosopher of education when talking about semiotics says, “We build up an ‘image store,’ a cache of almost instantly accessible mental images that can serve as metaphors for understanding.” We are unconsciously and uniquely always going to this “Image store” to retrieve images that are tagged with meaning. Everything, I believe, is actually always filtered through our eyes and comes from our unique vantage point formed largely in childhood. It is with this understanding that I stage the paintings. In the paintings, the figures are swathed, wrapped, costumed or even coddled in clothing. A feeling of cold is prevalent in all the work. I cover the eyes and parts of the face to remove natural points of focus. Often it is the back of the figure that is all the viewer sees. By carefully staging and costuming the figures I intend to evoke other connotations; masks/veils/ religious regalia or ceremonial attire as well as imagery that harkens back to a time when I lived in Iran. The clothing also provides rhythm and patterning to formally tie the work together and allows me to indulge in painting beautifully rendered pattern and decoration and where one often finds specificity. On a visit to the Rachofsky House, I came across a painting by the artist Karel Funk, Untitled 21, from his 2006 work. The acrylic on panel, 31 x 27” captivated me. The figure had its back—was it male or female?— to the viewer. A hooded winter jacket is worn, painted in a narrow tonal range. There is subtle rendering in the painting with the exception of a small amount of fur that appears around the hood with great detail and delicacy. I realize now, that it is the reduction of the figure to this simplicity with just one area of extreme specificity that drew me in as well as my affinity toward fabric . . . |