Interview with ART SF Blog 2018
A Dialogue in Reflection to DIM, An Exhibition of Paintings by Cannon
Dill at Part Two Gallery
Do you see this series of work as being a visual journal of the motifs you see
in daily life around Oakland? Are all these paintings based in Oakland?
● Yes, absolutely. I’ve been thinking about this show for a little over a year
and wanted to specifically highlight Oakland as the subject. Yet none of
the pieces actually turned out the way I had originally thought about
them - which were small exterior crops of Liquor store fronts. I think that
was the mistake by not working from thumbnails, but using a very fuzzy
idea as reference - and not respecting the process of painting, it will
always send you into another direction. I’d be working and make one
small adjustment and say “oh yeah, duh, that’s the trash lot I pass by
every week” and then It just becomes that - Which is probably why some
of these pieces teeter on the edge of abstraction, I might be pulling from
wherever that place might be.
The color pallete is striking in this series, do the specific hues have a certain
meaning or significance behind them, or have you simply chosen them for
their vibrancy and character?
● I have trouble seeing a lot of colors, but I’ve been really making strides in
learning the differences between certain shades and adapting by thinking
about tonality and contrast more so then what looks pretty. I figured out
this really goofy experiment where I would “like” certain photos on IG and
then after a week I would look back at the “liked photos tab” - what I
found is that there would be a common color in a set of 9 liked photos,
maybe a dusty pink color… So I would write that down and look for the
next and think about maybe why I was naturally attracted to that color in
the first place. That’s how I came up with the pallette for the show.
In this series, do you consider your works to be still lifes? Do you consider
Fire Ants On Bird Island (Lake Merrit) and Neighbors Dog (Barking On
Repeat) to be portraits?
● I was wanting to stay away from still lifes & portraits as much as possible
because I’m saving those for another time… I guess they seemed more
like Landscapes than anything else - just because of the aerial viewpoint
of some of these backgrounds reminded me of topographical mapping,
and then the focal points or main figures sort of just stamped on like
collage…Everything’s extremely flat and awkwardly placed. I tried to
approach it more through the eyes of a folk artist.
The variety of works shown, despite being the same color palette, they have
quite significant differences in approach to illustrating subject matter.
Neighbors Dog (Barking On Repeat) highlights the main subject and
abstracts the background. Whereas, Yard Sale on 10th St. approaches each
object of the sale is rendered clearly with detail. And Plastic Bags and Wild
Flowers, is perhaps the most abstract painting in the show a rendition of a
pile of trash with wild flowers growing. How do you choose what to abstract
and what to stand-out figuratively? Does this approach play a role in
communicating the narrative story of each work presented?
● There’s a Phillip Guston clip floating around, it was from his documentary
- He mentions this “third hand” comes into play when you’re really in the
zone. That’s just really how it is sometimes. When I’m really working, I’m
not actively thinking about anything in front of me because I’m thinking
about everything at once, like a huge storm of thoughts creating this
cloud of distortion - it’s lights out...The first 70% of the painting is made
on auto-pilot, and the last 30% is slower because I’m making sense of
what I made from the first half.
Two other paintings in the show have another distinct approach, 14th and
Harrison St. Market, and 2 Dollar Water, have an emulation of found
advertisement on the street, with figurative elements of products, prices.
This approach of painting a collage-like composition seem to play with
figuration and abstraction in a different way than previous paintings
mentioned. Are they telling a different story altogether, or are they still tied in
to illustration a visual composition found on the street?
● The idea is definitely not original - ripped ads and posters as painting has
been done countless of times, but I wanted these to have a lot of texture●
to make them stand out differently then what I’ve seen before. I’ve seen a
lot of really cool looking markets out here that I’ve been really inspired by.
The way ads are placed in windows, all layered up on top of eachother.
Nobody cares to remove the old ones from 10-15 years ago they just let
them ride in the sun until the color is almost completely faded. This
concept was the stepping stone for the show, “14th and Harrison st.
Market” was the first painting of this series painted almost a year ago
before I started the blocky looking Landscapes. This market really stood
out to me because It's a watering hole for so many different people -
downtown dwellers, club hoppers, after party folk, addicts, writers,
punkers, tweakers, yuppies and hustlers. All the most toxic people in one
building with a common purpose - which is a really beautiful thing.
5am Dopers On San Pablo Got An Eye On Who’s Passing By, is a very
evocative painting in this show. The different perspectives and scales
presented in the intersection give this a multi-narrative feel. In addition, the
dopers are symbolized as an eye with a ray, in contrast to the tiger and the
buses which are painted in greater detail. How often is symbolism presented
in your work, is it a way to abstract an idea even further? Do you create your
own symbology or do you borrow from common symbols in everyday life?
●
Yeah the whole painting is about riding the bus and seeing Tweakers and
Dopers awake at 5am. The Lion is depicted as someone high. It’s a weird
heavy painting forsure. Oakland is a really beautiful place but just like San
Francisco we have a huge problem with addicts - that nobody is really
taking drastic efforts to fix or come up with solutions. You pass down the
street and ignore the problems around you, so for this painting - by
having someone actively looking at it, I’m throwing that problem back at
them directly - as a reminder.
I tend to paint people as animals and symbols because it helps me focuson the narrative more than picking at the flaws of the human body, like oh
this arm looks bent in a weird way, or this face looks crumpled. People look at
a dog, no matter how the dog is painted it’s still going to be received for what
it is. I try to keep the messages really direct.
What does being an Oakland-based artist mean to you, and how to you see
this series of work interpreted outside of the Bay Area?
● It’s important to me. To be here, in the Bay area as a working artist. It’s a
good time to be here because it’s different then before. I’m very
receptive to trends on the internet, and with that it’s connected
throughout the world, so I take stuff I think can be used in a constructive
way and use it here. All the work in this show is really massive stuff, that’s
what I see online. People making big work… I’ve never really seen anyone
experiment with scale in the Bay. People have small living spaces so it
only makes sense to have smaller sellable work. So for this show it’s
definitely risky for me, but for the sake of showing other artists out here
that making large work is doable, the experiment is totally worth it. I still
try my best to keep the techniques in line with Bay area art history, it’s
flat, with latex, I’m building these stretchers with my friend - I share
studios with other working artists and musicians out here, so everyone is
talking and sharing common ideas.