Art & Life with David Dibble

Today we’d like to introduce you to David Dibble.

David, please kick things off for us by telling us about yourself and your journey so far.
As many artists, I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t creating art. I grew up on a potato and onion farm in Davis County, Utah, and from an early age, I was blessed to experience nature in personal and unsupervised ways. After studying art formally in Italy, Weber State University, Brigham Young University (BFA) and the Academy of Art University (MFA), I worked for six years in the animation industry at Blue Sky Studios (20th Century Fox) as a color artist. Following my work at Blue Sky, I began teaching Illustration at Brigham Young University in 2014. I teach mostly landscape painting, digital painting, and concept design for film.

Can you give our readers some background on your art?
I am primarily a gallery painter working in oil and focusing on landscape, often through the lens of agriculture and farm structures.

Growing up on a family farm, I spent a lot of time from alone with nature, and alone with structures.

Barns are the collective centers of farms and communities. They are places of storage, of safety, of refuge. They are the difference between a garden and a farm; between feeding a family and supplying a nation with food.

Barns are tangible examples of the efforts of those who have gone before and are very real connections to a collective past. They are symbolic in the way they remind us of those things for which our ancestors have worked; a reminder that those in previous generations were not people of idleness. They were problem-solvers, and they were pragmatists; integrity and labor were prized. Ostentation was shunned (they couldn’t afford it) but beauty was found and prized in small things.

Many factors have contributed to the challenges that smaller-scale agriculture face in our nation, but we as communities are now confronting very real questions of how we’ll deal with those things which have been handed down to us, and what we’ll hand down to others. Do we hold so sacred the rights of development that we are unwilling to come together as communities and decide what is worth keeping and remembering? Or are street signs and possibly some high-end furniture all that we leave to remind our children of what was there before?

I realize that there are no easy answers to these questions and that not every barn can or ought to be saved. But I fear that in our rush to develop the countryside we’re paving over our birthright and in the process creating a collective amnesia of the principles that our ancestors worked so hard to hand down and instill.

What would you recommend to an artist new to the city, or to art, in terms of meeting and connecting with other artists and creatives?
Instagram is a great tool to connect with folks from a distance, but nothing beats in-person experiences. I schedule plein air painting trips several times a year, and conventions (Oil Painters of America, Portrait Society, etc.) can be a great way to reconnect. Even weekly figure drawing or plein air sessions can be a great way. Many universities have guest-artist lecture series which the public is invited to, and that can be a great way to reconnect.

What’s the best way for someone to check out your work and provide support?
Upcoming Two-Man Show:
David Dibble and John Taft, New Works.
Mockingbird Gallery, Bend, OR
May 3 – June 6, 2019

Contact Info:

• Website: www.dibbleart.com
• Email: daviddibbleart@gmail.com
• Instagram: @dibbleart @byu_design
• Facebook: facebook.com/dibbleart

Getting in touch: VoyagePhoenix is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.