The artist and their work
The artist camagüeyano Rodrick Dixon, descending of Jamaican immigrants, it has created from the year 1988, a vast work, where the coloring, the titles and other references that are perceived, show the world of anglophone Caribbean. Their birth in a Jamaican community of the Pouring power station, and their constant bond with their inhabitants, they influenced it, as so that he transferred to their work these experiences.
When we appreciate the plastic artist's work, we are seeing Caribbean painting; it is Cuban for birth, but their education in the breast of a family and Jamaican community cannot stop to appear. Jamaica possesses a school of plastic of the one that have been able to appreciate some samples in Cuba, I eat Colin's works for example Garland, Hope Parckment, Judy Mac Millian, Roche Bunower, Cleve Morgan, Alexander Cooper, Edna Manley, Kart Jerey Craig and others. These authors use in their work codes of the universal art that you/they adapt and they assimilate, uniting them to their own miscegenation. We can find this way influences of the painting of the French naif Henry Rosseau in works as Calabash Tree of Karl Craig; of Russian Max Chagall in Journey of Edna Manley. In painting Ralph's work Campbell and Osmond Watson you can appreciate the treatment of their own mythology. Spirit of Savacou no.1, of Watson, is a good example of it. If we put the work of Dixon among those mentioned, for who doesn't know their origin, they pass perfectly as those of a painter more than that group. It happens that Cuban painter's condition, descending of Jamaicans, he/she makes it doubly Caribbean and their artistic production is the result in a way of to live and to see the life that is not more that of a Cuban.
The painter has rescued near eighty histories of the oral narration of his ancestros and it has represented them in his work, we find this way the duppies and other beings of an unknown world, for most of us, a world of which we have not heard speak anybody. It is indispensable because, to understand this artist's work, an approach to that mythology.
To these worlds they belong the duppies, goblins' that carry out all type of mischiefs, species from making that somebody trips, to give a pinch in the darkness, or to steal a candy. These mischievous characters, group in good or bad; the good ones, according to the tradition, are of white, yellow, red, green, blue color or reveal; the bad, are of black or gray color, but to these last ones the artist has never represented them. The duppies passes from a world to another in a trasmigración-purification that culminates with the return to África, dresses of white, because its stay in Caribbean is considered a species step by the purgatory where maybe reincarnate in new individuals.
Dixon lives in a place where creole is still spoken and it is common the use of the proverbs in this language; of equal it forms, it is present there the careful education of the children and the respect to the adults, characteristic of the Jamaicans, as well as the typical foods as the yam, the vegetable (known by them as akee) brain, the breadfruit or fruit of the bread, and the fish that he wastes away regularly, next to other plates common of the Caribbean food in general.
Not alone the legends, but also this sociocultural environment and the family atmosphere, they are represented by the artist in their work, we see this way holding as Grenly that is their dog mascot or Micellin that it is the name of a neighbor.
Starting from 1996, the artist adopts the surrealist style that today appreciates in its work, it uses technical mixed and it mixes the painting and the drawing. The topic of the Jamaican legends has been its favorite one and it is with the one that more comfortable he feels. He carried out a deep field study that allowed him to gather all the possible information in this respect; and not alone that, but rather it has created histories where new characters and places arise that has used as topics for their artistic creation. We find reference to the warring congos tikoloshis in the imaginary river of Udala, as well as to Inva and I Toss, characters' of their invention names. This artist recreates places and real facts, blended with other imaginary ones and with legends that already exist on the duppies.
As for the technique, Dixon used tones like the ocher and the green at the beginning, then it incorporated other, because when knowing the legends well, it used diverse colors to describe to the duppies, in a range that goes of the yellow, it traffics for the green and it arrives to the blue; this last one uses it with more frequency, the same as the transparencies. The funds vary, from plans, until achieving other textures.
Based on the different worlds of the mythology of their ancestors, it has incorporated to their works in a gradual way, more complex compositions that include a bigger quantity of images. He has also worked relating aspects to the topic of the emigration, but for very little time. In occasions, Dixon has used the possibilities that it offered him the art naif, but alone as divertimento, he has never made regularly it.
The most important in their career, according to the own artist, it has been to discover what he likes to make, to be discovered to itself with all the in-fluencia cultural of their ancestros, how to capture their spirituality, and to transmit the culture inherit-gives, the identity of their origins; in a such way that when it built their shop, he made it in Slopes, for not abandoning the contact with the atmosphere that inspires it to carry out their work. There where he received it to the world a Jamaican midwife in the old neighborhood of Brown Town, where they lived and part of the environment of their childhood and youth, Mr formed. Thimoty, with their almost opaque creole; terrible Miss Clemi that incited him the dogs; Mr. Brow the barber, and other, as the unforgettable narrator Mr. They live that so much magic gave him.
For the time being, Dixon will continue its work, and the duppies although in some way they finish its stay in Caribbean and return to África, they will continue living among us, thanks to the matter and this artist's camagüeyano valuable work that like an old man of his community said, he lives and believe low the design of those mischievous beings.
