Homecoming honour for artist Rodney Dickson: A life in paint

At the Belfast International Homecoming gala in the Titanic Hotel on Thursday past, Co Down-born artist Rodney Dickson, who has now spent a lifetime in New York, was honoured with the Belfast Ambassador Medal. Here Peter McDermott, arts editor in our sister publication the Irish Echo reviews the colourful life of an “insatiable” artist. 

“I think of him now, as I did then, as driven by an insatiable desire for art-making, looking, studying, talking.”

The words are from Wales-based teacher and artist Mike Knowles in an essay, “A life in paint,” included in the book “Rodney Dickson.” The “then” referred to is 1979, the year that the artist of that name left Northern Ireland for the Liverpool School of Art.

Rodney Dickson, himself, will be back for the Belfast International Homecoming 2024 tomorrow Thursday, Oct. 24, at the Titanic Hotel. 

The book was prepared by Nunu Fine Art to accompany a major exhibition of the Brooklyn-based artist’s work on two floors at its Broome Street gallery on Manhattan’s Lower East Side (it has another in Taipei, Taiwan). The publication will be formally launched in February.

Knowles’s contribution is the last in the book, while the opening essay, “Painting the subliminal sublime,” is by Richard Vine, the leading U.S. art critic, author and former managing editor of the magazine Art in America.

Nunu Fine Art commissioned journalist Tin Lee to write a profile of Dickson, which is comprised of five chapters – “On Family,” “On War,” “On Generosity,” “On Juliet” and “On Painting”

The book contains both English and Chinese versions of the text and has scores of personal photographs and reproductions of the artist’s work. 

In his essay, Vine says Dickson’s “approach is predicated on the faith that we share an innate visual language, one which operates much like music at its most successful, singing directly to the ear of the psyche and affecting all listeners in nearly identical ways, regardless of their superficial cultural differences. It is an art that assumes we all share a fundamental nature, both as an organic species and as citizens of the natural world.”

Knowles writes that Dickson’s “work and his curiosity have led him to India, mainland China, Taiwan, Cambodia and Vietnam, as well as to Devon, U.K., Amsterdam, Berlin, Reykjavik, and elsewhere. All these locales have impacted his work and strengthened his belief in a shared human experience.

“More recently, he has produced an ongoing series of portraits based on photographs supplied by friends and acquaintances,” Knowles reports on a painter who has works included in the permanent collection at Dublin’s Hugh Lane Gallery. “The long, white-robed standing figures feature intense eyes, not least because most are masked as a Covid-era precaution. If all we knew of Rodney Dickson were this remarkable series, the work would still mark him a painter of distinction.”

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The recent show comprised 15 abstract oil paintings in the Nunu Fine Art’s main gallery together with these more than 100 portraits in the lower-level exhibition space.

“Mike knows my work more than anybody, other than Juliet,” Dickson told the Echo, referring to his first wife, who died in 2016. (In 2024, he married Winnie Permata.)

In his chapters, the journalist Lee takes on the life and persona of the artist Dickson, born in December 1956 in Bangor, Co. Down. He had one older sibling, Nigel, who died in 2020. The family moved to Newtownards, a mostly Protestant town, where Dickson’s father was the headmaster of a primary school. 

“When Rodney was age 12, the Troubles began in Northern Ireland, mainly fueled by mutual grievances between Catholics and Protestants,” Lee writes.

If Newtownards was peaceful, “tension loomed daily in the background. Young Rodney dreaded the bombings and shootings that occurred frequently in nearby areas, but the conflict, with its continuous uncertainties and tensions, was also, in a way, thrilling. ‘I think I had a sense of excitement and fear, mixed together,’ he says.”

The following are brief extracts from Lee’s text. (Note: the double quotation marks are around Lee’s words and the single quotation marks around Dickson’s, while in one instance there are double quotes to indicate the latter quoting other people.)

‘On family’

“Rodney’s father was strong and standoffish. Having grown up during the Second World War, he had expectations of how a man should behave: one’s job was to demonstrate masculinity and stoicism. Showing emotions would suggest vulnerability, the sin of being mentally soft. However the headmaster was exceptionally good with children at school, providing the poorer students with clothes and hospitality. He also had an affinity for music, particularly the classical repertoire and music performed by children.

“‘He was actually a nice guy. But by God, he tried his best to hide it. So it was hard for me to get close to him.’”

Although his father “was closed off emotionally, he still passed on to Rodney one of the most important virtues in life: to treat everyone with respect and kindness.”

Dickson refers to his mother, an administration teacher in a local college, as a feminist before her time and the matriarch of the family.

“Having grown up as the eldest child, she was an attentive, all-purpose caretaker with, nevertheless, emotional edges of her own.” 

She is described as a fighter who would always stand her ground, a “trait that Rodney very clearly inherited.” 

Lee continues, “As a child, Rodney felt like an outsider: he had no interest in the everyday life of Newtownards. ‘It’s a working-class kind of small town. You’d fix cars for a living or run a farm, just something ordinary like that. I never fit in. I had many jobs that lasted just a week, because I either got fired or left.’

“His mother, fortunately, recognized his passionate interest in painting [most notably of motorcycles]. She managed to send him to the Liverpool College of Art. It was there that Rodney nurtured his love for painting and creation. He became addicted to it, craving for more as he, for the first time, felt a sense of purpose and belonging.”

For the folks back home, the “danger of a civil war turned simple everyday necessities into privileges and made art seem impractical.”

Writes Lee, “The more he traveled abroad— to the United States, to Vietnam— the more he strayed away from his family and Northern Ireland. Perhaps to offset the influence of his family, he has deliberately focused on his career.” 

“Although his father is deceased and his mother [in her 90s] is now battling dementia, their lessons live through his generous yet unwavering spirit.”

‘On War’

“Intrigued by ‘Apocalypse Now,’ Rodney ventured to Saigon in the 90s to witness the aftermath of the Vietnam War. Vietnamese culture was far from his own. ‘I always had a fascination with Asia,’ he says. ‘I grew up in Northern Ireland, where there were just white people. There were no Asian people, no Black people, pretty much nothing. Just people born there…The farthest place away is Asia, and the culture is, let’s just say, the most different.’”

“Affected by the civil strife that desolated his own country at the time, Rodney began to question the psychology of the human race.”

“‘When I went to live in England for art college, the Troubles were still pretty strong and some people asked me, “What’s it like? What are those people like that kill other people?” And I said, “They’re like you. They look and behave like you, but they get into a war situation and kill each other.’

“To Rodney, our capacity for love is matched by our haunting capacity to hate — both depend on context and the circumstances imposed on the person.”

“With that in mind, he viewed Vietnam with a sense of impartiality. He observed Vietnamese people and their culture as a complete outsider, seeing for himself the psychological toll of war. Political boundaries and worldly consequences aside, Rodney wants to understand people and make sense of who we are.”

‘On Generosity’

“Over the years, Rodney has left footprints across the globe, [including in] the deep mountains of China, where he did a residency. In his travels, he has met people from all walks of life. He engages everyone — from wealthy art hobbyists to rock stars to grocery store clerks — on the same basis: treat people like you want to be treated. Although this moral baseline might be considered to be universally accepted, Rodney argues that there is no true reciprocity between radically unequal individuals. ‘You and I, in a way, come from privileged situations. We’ve never had to worry about food. But there are people who grew up with a constant concern over hunger, so they may feel compelled to kill somebody just to steal some money.’ In Rodney’s perspective, it is too easy to claim that generosity is a two-way street. We can never fully know another person’s prior circumstances. Instead, he chooses to view people as they present themselves. It does not matter what they look like or what conditions led them to where they are today, Rodney evaluates their behaviors in the current moment.”

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Among the friends and fellow artists attending the opening of “Paintings” at Nunu Fine Art were, left at the back, Brad Darcy, Vytenis Jankunas and Lora Kmieliauskaite, and, at front center, Gunjan Tyangi, with her daughter Ruhaani Patel. [Photo by Peter McDermott]

“As a foreigner living in the United States, Rodney is well aware of the hardships and loneliness outsiders have to go through to establish themselves here. Like ghosts wandering between borders, expatriates who seek shelter in New York City need tremendous determination to fend off desolation. Rodney understands all too well the collective struggle of the culturally dislocated, so he and his companions have built a fortress of inclusivity with warmth and compassion. Within his walls, it matters not where you came from, but what you are made of.”

‘On Juliet’

“The events that occurred in 2016 were a watershed, dividing Rodney’s life in half. ‘My world changed when Juliet died,’ he says. His studio, completely rearranged after Juliet’s death, can feel bleak and lonely at times. The nightmares that haunted him for years, though diminished, still persist. Nowadays, he still loves his motorcycle, still wears old movie or band T-shirts, and still paints with conviction.”

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Juliet Hone.

‘On Painting’

“Rockaway Beach is hostile at night. The ocean engulfs any sign of life, leaving an overwhelming sense of darkness and silence. However, as if in rebellion against that suffocating power, Rodney sits alone on the shoreline, drawing. He feels that his chalky fingers have to be blacker than the night; each stroke on his wrinkled sketchbook has to compete with the thrashing waves. Making art is an aggressive declaration of his existence in the face of an immense natural power. The push and pull between the two forces is combative, as if the human were trading blows with the intangible. After half an hour of struggle, Rodney closes his notebook and stares into the void for a moment. He is content with the frightening beauty he has just captured; his expression mellows, and his posture softens.”

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 Untitled, 2014, Oil on board, 112 x 152.4, 48 x 60 in.

                                                                        *******

The last word might be left to Mike Knowles, a fellow artist as well as a tutor, mentor and friend to Rodney Dickson. 

“This is a rare artist, a painter of substance — brave, adventurous and wholly committed. He has produced memorable images in a range of mediums and will no doubt continue to do so. Rodney and I have exchanged images and thoughts for five decades, a correspondence which has enlivened my advancing years. I hope to see his work reach an ever-widening public, as I believe it will and certainly deserves to do.”

Go to nunufineart.com for more information about the gallery or email: gallery@nunufineart.com.