Jeremy Dickinson

Born in Halifax, Yorkshire in 1963, painter
Jeremy Dickinson now lives and works in London. He studied at the York College
of Arts and Technology and went on to graduate from Goldsmith's in 1986.

From a young age he was fascinated by toy cars and has
been an avid collector of them all his life, seeking them out in in toy shops. He
is just as obsessed by them today, and they are at the heart of much of his
artwork. Dickinson primarily specialises in still life paintings, creating pieces
which appear pertinent and serious despite his use of subjects which are, on
the whole, trivial. He meticulously reproduces the cars, lorries, buses, and other
four wheeled vehicles, using models from his personal collection

In his compositions the vehicles are piled on top of one another, almost
seeming to form totem poles or precarious pillars which threaten to collapse at
any point. With a bit of distance and imagination, some argue that these
childish arrangements recall the different regions of the United Kingdom. What
is more, and aside from Dickinson's astoundingly accurate recreation, when
looking a little closer you cannot help but notice that the miniature models
are in fact toys. To complement this Dickinson uses largely pastel colours,
recalling the world of childhood whilst maintaining the rigorous technique and
artistic distance proper of adulthood.

Dickinson has put together several different series celebrating
transport; in the 1990s he honoured the humble bus with Civic Pride, using amateur photographs of buses as the basis for
his work. For a time, he also briefly flirted with sculpture, scavenging bits
of railing, or even containers, from railways.  He sometimes adds other souvenirs of childhood
to his collections of vehicles: glimpses of landscapes, modelling clay, cardboard
boxes to build huts with.

Collectors from across the world have
now been reeled in to Jeremy Dickinson's universe, which transports them back
to a time which must – for them, too – feel rather distant. The proof of
Dickinson's enduring popularity is in his many international exhibitions; he
has shown his works from San Francisco to Copenhagen to Japan.