Dickenson’s new body of work, Throwing Shapes, explores the relationship between earth pigment, gesture, and movement as a means of recording action on canvas. A phrase commonly associated with club dancing, Throwing Shapes also speaks to the artist’s own physical movements in the process of painting, which she approaches as a form of dance.

 

Dickenson gathers and processes earth pigments by hand, grinding them with a mortar and pestle before pouring the handmade paint onto the canvas. Through gravity and gesture, she coaxes shapes to fold and flow into one another, allowing traces of previous movements to remain in the paint’s residue. These marks record not only the movement of the material across the canvas, but also the artist’s physical engagement with the earth—from gathering and grinding the pigment to applying it through expressive, embodied gestures. Each work is titled after an imagined dance move, evoking the artist’s choreography in the studio and drawing a parallel between her dynamic painting process and the improvisational language of creative movement.