A Daily Dose of Art: Thornton Dial
Today is Thornton Dial’s birthday.
Dial was born in Sumter County, Alabama and lived in the state all his life.
“Thornton Dial was born into a sharecropping family in rural Alabama, on the eve of the Great Depression. He experienced the trauma and tumult of both Jim Crow segregation and the civil rights movement. Profoundly influenced by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Dial used art to confront issues of racial oppression in the United States, developing an allegorical style that was abstracted but narrative, conveying concerns both personal and universal. His large, bold works, with incisive titles and themes of race and class, captivated the art world through sophisticated content and an aesthetic that defied stereotypes of “folk.” Dial bridged the worlds of Black vernacular self-taught artists and the contemporary mainstream. He was a conduit between nineteenth-century-born artists like Bill Traylor; African American quilters who had, for too long, gone unrecognized as artists; and a younger generation of Black creatives seeking a way forward.”
-Smithsonian American Art Museum
Here’s a bit of what he said about his art:
“Since I been making art, my mind got more things coming to it. The more you do, the more you see to do. The spirit works off the mind and get stronger. Like an angel following you around. Angel watching over you is just the life in your own body.”
“My art is the evidence of my freedom. When I start any piece of art I can pick up anything I want to pick up. When I get ready for that, I already got my idea for it. I start with whatever fits with my idea, things I will find anywhere. I gather up things from around. I see the piece in my mind before I start, but after you start making it you see more that need to go in it. It’s just like inventing something. It’s like patterns that you cut out to show you how to make something—a boxcar, or clothes. Everything got a pattern for it. The pattern for a piece of art is in your mind; it’s the idea for it. That’s the pattern.”
-Souls Grown Deep
Learn more about Dial, his life, and his art here and here.
Below is a photo of Dial’s Slave Ship that I was able to see earlier this week during a visit to the New Orleans Museum of Art.
What do you think? Please share your thoughts on this artist/topic or a glimpse into one of your recent doses of art in the comments below.