Press
Interior And Exterior Spaces
By Louis Fox
Redlands
Laddie John Dill lives and works in Venice, California, only a short distance from his birthplace, Long Beach. Educated at Chouinard, where he studied painting with Emerson Woelffer and met Robert Irwin, Dill is, in all respects, a southern Californian artist. Although his work does not reflect any obvious influences, he acknowledges strong debts to Matisse and to extensive dialogs he has had with other artists, especially Robert Smithson. But the elegance of Matisse and the raw grandeur of Smithson have been incorporated in ways that make it difficult or impossible to isolate and identify such elements, and today Dill’s paintings reflect what can only be called his own mythology and style.
Dill’s paintings, now at University of Redlands gallery, are based on tough structuring, subtle coloration and manipulation of unique materials. Over a constructed wood support, Dill applies a cement that has strong adhesive powers as well as great flexibility which enables him to manipulate it at will, sometimes as a thick impasto and at other times as a thin wash.
All of Dill’s work suggests a recognizable form, either landscape or interior, but never a particular place. Derived, in a way, from his earlier sand environments, the landscapes are not traditional; they resemble aerial views of the earth as seen from a great distance, or an isolated place in the desert. A grid of white chalk underlying each piece reinforces a mapping concept. The colors –blues, grays, browns and acid greens, low in value- are dictated by a subjective preference. The works also contain large, irregular pieces of glass that serve as tactile jolts and as mirrors reflecting the surroundings. Each piece is therefore incomplete, continually changed by the light and by the chance movements of viewers. Having exhausted his interest in the use of glass, Dill eliminates it from the most current pieces. The landscapes are fascinating for their duality, a play between the formality of the abstract and the acknowledgement of content, but it is the abstract that takes precedence and commands our admiration.
The pieces evoking interiors attempt to suggest the figure. No human forms are actually present, but Dill uses a format that strongly suggests an unseen figure. The earlier pastel drawings were very expressionistic, with large sweeps of pigment that often seemed to obliterate the space. In those works color appeared as shafts of light that indirectly recalled Turner’s interiors at Petworth. Each “interior” on view here resembles a corner of a room, emphasized by diagonal planes. Some works – and these often seem to be the very best – are surprisingly restrained, with startling veins of color set against a dark ground. Others derive their impact from Dill’s slashing exuberance, but there are indications that a direction toward austerity may eventually triumph.
There are certain similarities between the interiors and the landscapes. Both exemplify the same vigorous sense of movement and color range, but more importantly, both have that “uncompleted” element – the shifting reflections in the glass and the unseen but felt presence of the human form in the interiors. This survey of Dill’s most recent paintings provides insight into an intelligent and tireless worker who has made painting his world, a world that is both engrossing and personally consuming.
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Interior And Exterior Spaces
By Louis Fox
Redlands
Laddie John Dill lives and works in Venice, California, only a short distance from his birthplace, Long Beach. Educated at Chouinard, where he studied painting with Emerson Woelffer and met Robert Irwin, Dill is, in all respects, a southern Californian artist. Although his work does not reflect any obvious influences, he acknowledges strong debts to Matisse and to extensive dialogs he has had with other artists, especially Robert Smithson. But the elegance of Matisse and the raw grandeur of Smithson have been incorporated in ways that make it difficult or impossible to isolate and identify such elements, and today Dill’s paintings reflect what can only be called his own mythology and style.
Dill’s paintings, now at University of Redlands gallery, are based on tough structuring, subtle coloration and manipulation of unique materials. Over a constructed wood support, Dill applies a cement that has strong adhesive powers as well as great flexibility which enables him to manipulate it at will, sometimes as a thick impasto and at other times as a thin wash.
All of Dill’s work suggests a recognizable form, either landscape or interior, but never a particular place. Derived, in a way, from his earlier sand environments, the landscapes are not traditional; they resemble aerial views of the earth as seen from a great distance, or an isolated place in the desert. A grid of white chalk underlying each piece reinforces a mapping concept. The colors –blues, grays, browns and acid greens, low in value- are dictated by a subjective preference. The works also contain large, irregular pieces of glass that serve as tactile jolts and as mirrors reflecting the surroundings. Each piece is therefore incomplete, continually changed by the light and by the chance movements of viewers. Having exhausted his interest in the use of glass, Dill eliminates it from the most current pieces. The landscapes are fascinating for their duality, a play between the formality of the abstract and the acknowledgement of content, but it is the abstract that takes precedence and commands our admiration.
The pieces evoking interiors attempt to suggest the figure. No human forms are actually present, but Dill uses a format that strongly suggests an unseen figure. The earlier pastel drawings were very expressionistic, with large sweeps of pigment that often seemed to obliterate the space. In those works color appeared as shafts of light that indirectly recalled Turner’s interiors at Petworth. Each “interior” on view here resembles a corner of a room, emphasized by diagonal planes. Some works – and these often seem to be the very best – are surprisingly restrained, with startling veins of color set against a dark ground. Others derive their impact from Dill’s slashing exuberance, but there are indications that a direction toward austerity may eventually triumph.
There are certain similarities between the interiors and the landscapes. Both exemplify the same vigorous sense of movement and color range, but more importantly, both have that “uncompleted” element – the shifting reflections in the glass and the unseen but felt presence of the human form in the interiors. This survey of Dill’s most recent paintings provides insight into an intelligent and tireless worker who has made painting his world, a world that is both engrossing and personally consuming.
Back to Press