This August, Lebanon Picture Frame and Fine Art Gallery is excited to announce the long-awaited return of oil painter Casey Dixon. Her unconventional style of rendering conventional subjects drew much acclaim, and the artist will once again be exhibiting her recent body of work of oil on board and on paper. The general public is invited to the Artist’s Reception, August 2nd from 5 to 8 PM, as part of the First Friday Art Walk of Downtown Lebanon.
Dixon, currently based in Lititz, PA, learned how to view the world as a painter from a young age. Her formative years were spent in the natural splendor of Mt. Gretna, where she learned to appreciate the ephemeral color, composition and spaces in nature. Dixon attended Maryland Institute, College of Art but then decided to pursue a different career after a year in art school. She attributes her art education to her parents, who are gifted artists in their own right. Two decades later, her path has led her back to painting. According to Dixon, this maturation has allowed her to be “more free with painting and hold few expectations”.
Dixon is inspired by her immediate surroundings, such as people, family, landscapes visited and even flowers in her kitchen. Though her subject matter may sound commonplace, her style is anything but. The artist attempts to capture fleeting moments in time through bold, broad brush strokes; unexpectedly, shocking flashes of neon paint peek through layers of pastel from underneath. True to the original Impressionists in the 19th C., Dixon is less interested in reproducing the subject in a photorealistic way than in quickly rendering the full visual energy of the moment, veering towards abstraction. “I always paint very fast, rarely returning to a painting after the first sitting,” remarked Dixon, “I will, however, paint the same subject many times.” The artist favors painting with oil on board, “which is a gloriously smooth surface” and on paper, “it has tooth”.