WILLIAM DICKERSON(1904-1972)
"A REGIONALIST VISION IN TAOS"
William Dickerson first visited New Mexico on his honeymoon in 1931. He
made regular trips from his home in Wichita, Kansas to paint the
Southwest landscape for the next forty years. His many summer
excursions produced an abundant body of work visually
portraying Dickerson's love of New Mexico and the unlimited
stimulation it presented to artists. He became a close friend of
Taos Society of Artists associate B.J. O. Nordfeldt ,when
Nordfeldt made extended trips to Wichita beginning in 1929. The
influence of Nordfeldt is obvious in many of Dickerson's works both
from the 1930's and later. The modernist ideals of Cezanne ,which
Nordfeldt so diligently followed, is much in evidence in Dickerson's
geometric portrayals of the New Mexico landscape. His
conpositons of the the naturally cubistic forms of the New
Mexico villages allowed him the perfect subject matter to pursue
the modernist influences of his time. Dickerson's many depictions
of these colorful scenes faithfully exhibits his emotional artistic
response to subject "there for the taking."
William
Dickerson's art training was , like many of the early Taos
artists, at the Art Institute of Chicago. Dickerson's
decision to return to his native Kansas to accept a position with the
Wichita Art Association led to a forty year teaching career in his home
state. His dedication to his community became his life force
while his personal art, as a result, had little exposure outside
of Wichita. Membership in the well known Kansas-based
Prairie Print Makers provided what was to be the only broad
exposure for an artist devoted to his home in America's heartland.
Wiiliam
Dickerson was, and remains, the most representative Kansas painter and
printmaker in Kansas art history. The native realism of the 1930's,
whether depicting Midwestern agrarian scenes or the adobes of Taos, was
to be swept away with the advent of the New York School and abstract
expressionism following the Second World War. Dickerson's
conscious decision to maintain his representational style in the face
of risking almost certain obscurity is obvious in his body of work. In
doing so, William Dickerson sustained his lifelong commitment to
his personal vision, depicting the region he loved, both Kansas
and New Mexico, in the style of his time.
Robert L. Parsons Fine
Art 131 Bent Street, Taos NM
87571 505.751.0159
