About Pip Dickens
Background
Pip Dickens (b. 1962) is a painter. She has a Masters in Fine Art from The Slade School of Art, University College London, graduating in 2000. She is Lecturer in Fine Art (Painting) at Lancaster University and Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and Member of The National Association for Fine Art Education.
Career
She has had many solo and group exhibitions (see Exhibitions) and her work is in numerous public, commercial and private collections in the UK and overseas including charcoal drawings in the Prints & Drawings Collection at the British Museum and paintings in the Bradford Museums and Galleries collection and The Stanley & Audrey Burton Gallery at the University of Leeds.
Research
In 2010-2011 she was the Leverhulme Trust Award Artist in Residence at the University of Huddersfield, Department of Music collaborating with composer, Professor Monty Adkins on synergy between music and painting through research of Japanese aesthetics. She also undertook research in Kyoto and co-authored a book ‘Shibusa - Extracting Beauty’ with Adkins. She contributed a chapter: 'A Choreography of the Senses - The Painter's Studio' (Chapter 13) in Heywood, I. (Ed.). (2017). Sensory Arts and Design published by Routledge, London. She participated in the exhibition and contributed text to 'Enough is Definitely Enough' by Andrew Bracey - a 2021 publication illustrating three touring exhibitions of 62 artists responses to the famous Velazquez painting, 'Las Meninas' with contributions by participating artists (including Pip Dickens).
Painting Practice
Concepts of illusion and double meaning are recurring themes - The notion that we may receive two contrasting visual (or intellectual) responses to a single stimulant. Her painting methodology is determined by the subject matter and often juxtaposes conventional painting techniques with innovative methods to create unusual surfaces, layers and textures. Depth and surface contrasts are particularly important in her work.
Her work draws upon many sources from natural phenomena to the darker elements of phantasmagoria, from opacity to transparency, from Cinema and cinematic devices to literary sources.
Last Update July 2021
