Calgary AB, 2021. Mark Dicey. Photo: Don Molyneaux
Mark Dicey Studio is located on the traditional territories of the Niitsitapi (Blackfoot) + the people of the Treaty 7 region in Southern Alberta, which includes the Siksika, the Piikuni, the Kainai, the Tsuut’ina, + the Iyarhe Nakoda First Nations. Calgary/Moh’kinsstis is also home to Métis Nation of Alberta, Region III.
Mark Dicey exhibition – Michael Gibson Gallery – 2021
The title of my new exhibition is ‘Confluence’, an enchanting word that is
significant to me for a number of reasons.
The city I live in is Calgary, Alberta where two rivers, the Bow and the
Elbow flow together. The confluence of the two is a wonderfully physical
visual that I think about and metaphorically relate to in my painting
practice – a convergence of organic and geometric vocabulary.
Conscious / unconscious exploration.
The thought process and working methods I use to pursue my singular
interest in Abstraction are an assemblage of the materials I use and my
touch or handling of it. Shape, colour, line, surface and edge are
brought together through the interactive painting process juxtaposing
both geometric and organic elements. How the paint is applied and
manipulated is of utmost importance – at times, free hand, free flowing
shape, line and edge, and in contrast, tight precise hard edge line and
shape.
Each painting in this body of work informed and influenced each other.
Instinctively I pursued the directions allowing the response, give and
take, arising from the process. Like the flow of two bodies of water
converging, mingling, to create one even more powerful form.
Mark Dicey
April 2021
2020 “The work selected for Rhythm Section was created over an intensive six month period, the end of which corresponded with the arrival and devastation of Covid-19. In the exhibition, the viewer is presented with a new and thrilling body of work but also a renewed place from which to look at the world, one populated by the real and imagined representations of life that Dicey brings forward. Creating from his one car garage turned studio space, Dicey has taken up the role of the flâneur – observing, visually digesting and creating an understanding from his own unique vocabulary. For amongst the large washes of warm yellows, the shocks of greens, blues, pinks and the curving lines, the viewer will discover that the painter is a poet: his words brushstrokes, his line breaks blocks of colour. Dicey as the poet of painting offers a place for reading our present from his rhythmic and colourful perspective.” -Maeve Hanna (courtesy Jarvis Hall Gallery, May 2020) https://jarvishallgallery.com/rhythm-section-viewing-room/ https://www.maevehanna.ca/
Mark Dicey is a painter. His field of interest is in abstraction/nonrepresentational work. Studio work, reading and general consciousness of this chosen discipline (painting history and abstraction in particular) are on going and critical to his practice.
The everyday world is absorbed and brought into the making and thinking process: colours, shapes, textures and structural relationships.
For Dicey, the reactionary relationship that takes place in the painting process is twofold:
1. the day to day observances (memory) are filtered, reconfigured and applied (consciously/unconsciously);
2. the interaction with what is taking place with the medium, assessing and pursuing what is evolving – observing, guiding, controlling, manipulating, questioning, confirming.
For Dicey, the work he makes and the creative process itself are states of flux and relational conversation.
Knowledge of important painters who came before such as Hans Hoffman, Joan Mitchell, Helen Frankenthaller, Cy Twombly, Jack Bush and Marion Nicoll as well as living contemporary artists such as Mary Heilmann and Brice Marden (to only name a few) is of utmost importance to Dicey’s ongoing investigation, questioning and development.