Eleanor Dickinson is a painter whose work exhibits, at different moments, the qualities of dramatist and documentarian. As documentarian, she created a body of work over several decades that contains the searching but compassionate gaze of friend and observer, whether she is creating works that record lovers embracing or Pentecostalists in moments of ecstatic prayer under the revival tent. As dramatist, she has painted friends who are experiencing grief, illness, and loss—by placing them on something like a cross. Don’t get the wrong idea: her cross paintings are not literal, violent crucifixions. Rather, they are figures stretched out vertically and seen from below, so that they are foreshortened.

These works can be heart-wrenching, to be sure, but they are about a deep identification with the suffering and stress experienced by those she cares about. Many of her works are painted on black velvet—a medium we often associated with kitschy, pop-culture depictions of Elvis. But she’s found that the dramatic darkness of the black velvet gives her work something of the intensity of a Caravaggio. Dickinson’s imagination is all about human body language—and what she shares with us speaks with all the eloquence and vulnerability of the soul.

Some of Dickinson’s work is featured in Image issue 48.

Biography

Eleanor Dickinson, a native of Knoxville, Tennessee, received her Bachelor of Arts in Fine Arts from the University of Tennessee in 1952, becoming one of the department’s first graduates. One year later, she moved to California and began redefining her process of creating traditional figure drawings via strong emotions. Since then, Dickinson has maintained a life-long commitment to the human form and has continued to reveal the make-up of her social conscience – a social conscience that has responded to intenese moments of human existence, ranging from the experiences of Pentecostal Southerners, to the ecstasies of lovers, to the trials of the homeless, to the sufferings of AIDS victims. Dickinson continues to reside in San Francisco, as she has for more than 50 years.

Her works have appeared at several museum exhibitions across the country, including the 2007 “Passionate Drawings: Retrospective” at the Peninsula Museum of Art, and 1995 Museum of Contremporary Religious Art in St. Louis, as well as several in several public collections, including The National Museum of American Art, The Stanford Art Museum, The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Library of Congress. She has also been Professor Emerita of California College of the Arts from 1971 to 2001, and has been Viacom CH29 TV Producer of “The ‘Art of the Matter” since 1986.

Current Projects
February 2008

My projects this year: A Retrospective “The Fires Within: Passionate Drawings by Eleanor Dickinson” was held last summer at the Peninsula Museum of Art in Belmont and currently I have an exhibition titled “Body of Evidence: Drawn from Life” at the COMMA Gallery in Orlando, Florida. This coming March, Ohlone College in Hayward, CA will be hosting “Black Velvets and Dreams,” an art show at the Louie Meager Art Gallery, from March 3 to April 2, with a Workshop, Lecture and Reception on March 19, 2008. This winter I will have another Retrospective called “Black Velvets and Dreams” at the Ohlone College Art Gallery in Fremont, California; this makes a very busy year! Of course you don’t plan it that way. Museum and Gallery directors get ideas or see your work in another space and suddenly start wanting a show.

Thinking back, I can remember how much I would want to show certan work in a particular gallery or museum but couldn’t interest them. I have hustled my work through the New York and California galleries as every other artist has. The artist still does not get to plan the show or choose the work, but somehow the work has its own voice and power, and when directors get to the studio to really look they will often suddenly see a great possibility.

As an example: fascinated by dreams in 1969 to 1971 I decided to every morning draw what I had dreamed the night before. There were many technical problems to doing this but it worked out to be a very exciting body of work. When my dealer in San Francisco showed them, the critics hated them: one said after seeing my show that night he “dreamed of not one but two train wrecks” and to “go to the gallery at your own risk” (naturally there was a crowd there in response!) When I showed them in a class, I was team-teaching at U.C. Berkeley to several hundred Jungian therapists they were appalled at the honesty of them and yelled it was “ego masturbation” and should only be whispered to a therapist (artists in the class yelled back that’s what art was!) But then I showed the dreams in New York and got nothing but rave reviews – and no question about not having a right to show them. That was in 1972 and they haven’t been seen since. Then when Bob Johnson – who has a great eye – was picking work for the Peninsula Museum show as Curator he wanted to see them and chose a number of dreams which got a lot of important attention in the show; there will be even more in the next show.

Somehow I’m feeling more relaxed about the work I do. Maybe it’s getting older but there’s a great need to spend my time in the studio: there are far too many half-finished works sitting there, far too many ideas unexplored. My best friend Jo Hanson died this year: – I’m feeling so bereft and also much more aware that it can happen any time – and suddenly all those piles of work are screaming at me to finish them. The art has a really strong voice: I think I need to listen.