It is with meticulousness and rigour that Jeremy Dickinson endeavours to reproduce in greater detail on canvas the toy cars he played with as a child. Cars, coaches, lorries, cranes and containers are dissected and observed from all possible angles. No detail of reality is omitted in so far as reproducing the vehicles’ original colours, as though the artist aims to produce an almost photographic image.
If however at first glance it seems that the paintings of Jeremy Dickinson are a faithful representation of reality, the miniature-model collectors’ well-informed eye, will very quickly notice that these are nothing but toys. The background of each canvas, usually grey, off-white or sometimes a pastel shade, conceals the true scale of the models.
Certain paintings remain set in the tradition of still life and linger over studying scratched and dented vehicles, the subject placed at the centre of the canvas. The most recent paintings introduce movement in complex settings based on the way in which children can interact with their toys. The composition of the paintings frequently suggests off-canvas activity.
Some of the works feature pile-ups of cars, sometimes forming totems of improbable equilibrium.
Sometimes new elements are introduced; fragments of landscape, cardboard boxes, blocks of modelling clay, playing cards – as much as what one finds in a child’s’ room.
Thus Jeremy Dickinson chooses his viewpoint in the representation of a world which is no longer his. It is a scrambling of the spontaneity of childhood with the rigour and hindsight of an adult.
Jeremy Dickinson was born in 1963 in Halifax, Yorkshire in Great Britain. A graduate of Goldsmith’s College in 1986, he lives and works in London. His work is regularly exhibited in Europe by the Nils Staerl Gallery in Copenhagen, Lotta Hammer Thieme in Darmstadt and with the HammzeSidi Gallery in London. He also exhibits with Anthony Meier Fine Arts in San Francisco, Sara Meltzer Gallery in New York and with the Tomio Koyama Gallery in Japan. The Horsens Kunstmuseum in Denmark had a solo show of his work in 2004.
