Jane Dickson paints an after-hours universe filled with glittering highways and headlights, Times Square and Vegas revelry, and seedy tattoo parlors and strip clubs.  

The artist, who was born in Chicago, moved to New York in the 1970s, finding an apartment and studio in Times Square. There she stayed for decades, drawing inspiration for her paintings from the raucous and tawdry vignettes she witnessed on the city streets. Her nocturnal scenes flew in the face of the era’s prevailing tastes. At the height of Minimalism, her works were in conversation with the New York scenes of Edward Hopper and, with her flaneur’s eye, offered a noir Impressionism for the late 20th century.  

Courtesy of Jane Dickson.

Dickson has always found her own scene in the city, however, and in the 1980s and 1990s, she collaborated with a dizzying range of graffiti artists, fashion designers, and filmmakers. Dickson was a producer on her husband, the filmmaker Charlie Ahearn’s defining film Wild Style (1982), which is often credited as the first hip-hop film. She also worked as an animator for the first digital light board in Times Square, at 1 Times Square. More recently, Dickson’s work was included in the 2022 Whitney Biennial. Currently “Are We There Yet?” at Karma in Los Angeles presents the first survey of her highway paintings (through November 2).  

Tonight, the New York Academy of Art is honoring Dickson at the 32nd annual edition of Take Home a Nude, the auction and party hosted at Sotheby’s. “Her work explores the underbelly of society through subjects like strip clubs, diners, motels, sex workers, and their respectable counterparts: suburban homes, driveways, or businessmen, each rendered in an eerie light that suggests the viewer question what’s going on beneath the surface,” said the NYAA in a statement.  

Reflecting on her work of half of a century, Dickson put together a mini photo album of some of the people and places that have inspired her work to this day.  

Courtesy of Jane Dickson.

I ran the countdown to the Ball Drop on the Spectacolor sign at 1 Times Square on New Year’s Eve for several years in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and I made a series of paintings of New Year’s Eve from my experiences living in that neighborhood throughout the 1980s. After a million subway rides in and out of Times Square where I worked and lived for decades, I was commissioned to create mosaics for the Times Square Station of New Year’s Eve revelers. I was invited back this past New Year’s Eve to celebrate again right where I have rung the new year in so many times.

Courtesy of Jane Dickson.

This photo I took of traffic in the rain. I was heading upstate looking for the open sky on any of a hundred trips, part of a series called “Out Of Here“

Courtesy of Jane Dickson.

For a decade, I’ve been a frequent traveler to the South Bronx where I have collaborated repeatedly with the artist Crash, and others on various art installations. Here we are creating the Return of City Maze with the Tats Cru.

Courtesy of Jane Dickson.

This is a photograph of me in front of my installation of The Bride, taken inside Peepland porn emporium on the Deuce, 1992. This installation transformed the strip club into a bridal shop. The location was a short walk from my studio but across a vast gulf into another world.

Courtesy of Jane Dickson.

As one of the producers of the film Wild Style I toured Japan for weeks with 20+ rappers, graf artists, and break dancers performing across the country. Here we were boarding the bullet train to Kyoto.

Courtesy of Jane Dickson.

This photograph is part of a series of bridges and tunnels photographed and painted as I was commuting to teach in Westchester after 9/11 and pondering which was more likely to be bombed by terrorists and where I’d rather die.

Courtesy of Jane Dickson.

I was invited by the Chinese government to participate in an artist exchange tour of far-western China. I was looking for the biggest sky possible in the Taklamakan Desert, in a world as distant from NYC as possible.

Courtesy of Jane Dickson.

Here’s another pic from on the road. I’m meditating on what’s out there.

Welcome to Source Material, where artists share their creative journeys beyond the confines of the studio. From hunting down frescos in Florence to chasing storms in Cornwall, we explore the eclectic sources of inspiration that fuel artists’ imaginations.