about the artist

STATS
1968 - Born in North Carolina
1986 - Graduated High School, Cincinnati, OH
1990 - Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Ceramics, Washington University, Saint Louis, MO
1991 - Taught Ceramics and Glassblowing in Georgia Southwestern College, Americus, GA
1993 - Masters degree in Ceramics, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH
1994 - Began tattooing in Columbus, OH
2005 - Still ticking...

Many things in life are linear with a clear beginning, middle and end. These things anyone could describe without hesitation. Intellectual ideas, structural concepts, concrete things. Words are good for that. So, how do you describe something that is more fluid, like a dream? Or something that swims in and out of the fog of childhood memories? Or fragments of stories overheard from passing strangers?

For Chris Dingwell, the very fact that he wants to describe the indescribable and because words don’t always work, he’s forced to express it with other means. With the visual equivalent of analogy, innuendo, and metaphor, he chases the slippery, the indefinite, with paint. Because of this, the worlds and characters in his paintings aren't restricted in any way. He can paint them, shape them, and sculpt them from the ether of memory. He implies, suggests, withholds, and sometimes he even misleads. He leaves it up to the viewer—the witness—to translate the literal forms to find subjective meaning. In the end, the viewer will see what he sees, hear what he hears; forced either to rationalize some interpretation into the truth, or to let go of his need for concrete reassurance and drift away into... his own ether of memory?

Chris works with collage, distorted found photographs and digitally-manipulated images to create the compositions and narratives for his paintings. For Chris, these found images will often reveal a layer of meaning at the time that it's discovered, only to reveal whole new worlds of meaning as they are transformed into his paintings. Many of his paintings and images get recycled over the years for this very reason; and not because a new answer presents itself, but new questions, a new phantom. Some wide-open new mystery that claws at his door.
 
One wonders, “Will Chris ever ‘retire’ these images because he was finally able to pin down that elusive truth?” I don’t think it’ll be possible for him. Isn't it really the elusiveness, and not the truth that he is pursuing? Because after all, it’s the chase that counts, not the capture; and that's what keeps his art alive.