Brace-Matt Dibble at Tregoning and Company

One of the most significant developments for me as an artist is that I now have a place to consistently exhibit my paintings. I worked for a number years without this kind of outlet, always preparing but never knowing if my work would be seen. Today, I’m fortunate enough to have gained this type of support.

Discovering that I’m not alone has reinforced me, allowed me to be freer in my approach to painting and all that goes with it. It has reduced doubt and added substantial energy to my creative process. I’ve learned to embrace all the necessary tasks needed to mount an art exhibition, from the craftsmanship required to make a stretcher to the intricacies of collaborating with the gallery. The whole process intrigues me.

When I show my work in a gallery, people write about it. They purchase it, praise it and criticize it. I become not just an isolated artist working alone, but rather, a part of the larger conversation. While exhibitions force me to deal with both the positive and the negative, they continue to provide much needed engagement.

Painting and drawing have always been anchors for me. Life’s pull is very strong, and I struggle to keep it from distracting me from my aim. I’ve found that the gallery is my cornerstone. It acts as a brace to sustain and keep me upright, in front of the easel.                         

Gate Clicks (oil on canvas) 52"x52" 2014

An exhibition of paintings by Matthew Dibble opening May 16th, 2014 at www.tregoningandco.com

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Matthew Dibble’s Paintings Live In A Cubist World Of Domestic Purgatory

moray mair | Art and design | April 15, 2014

Matthew Dibble‘s paintings live in a cubist world of ancient Greece, his mythical figures floating through a monochromatic landscape, a geometric blueprint of domesticity, a purgatory, their restlessness creating a tension, a desire to move on and tell their story.

There is deep need in these pictures, as if Dibble is determined to arrest our attention and draw us back into the mists of pre-history, to recognise our forefathers, our oral tradition and the need to reconnect with the wisdom of the ancients. His appropriation of a cubist aesthetic suggesting both a modernist and atavistic sensibility, a primal urge that resides within all of us, a childlike fascination with the dark and the monsters who lurk in its shadows.

This duality, the juxtaposition between geometry and myth, creates an energy, a space into which we can transpose our own stories thus becoming part of a collective narrative that stretches across time. Unlike his loose and expressive abstract paintings Dibbles figurative pictures begin on a small piece of paper. For over 20 years he has been drawing with ink. Always, consistently. And when the painting becomes too demanding he returns to the pen. It is out of this exercise of unconscious expression that these beautiful and strange comical pictures are created. This outpouring, this psychological vision, gives his figures a stage on which to act out their neuroses, their desires and needs as they pace the room waiting for an answer that will never come. Here’s what he has to say about his work:

Can it be said I am an artist when painting but other times, no? I see I’ve been led to a question. When am I an artist? An artist question seems more appropriate at this time. The creative process puts me in question. When I begin to work, the first thing I see is how lazy I am, and how weak my attention is. I see I want to fall back on old tricks, things I know that will make a successful painting. But I’m trying to discover something new.

I’m very much interested in this process, not necessarily to make a good picture but to discover something new. How can I bring more feeling to my work? Am I being honest about my experience as a painter? This questioning process leads to bigger questions such as who am I and why am I here?