Elijah River Dion's Projects

BFA Student

Major: Painting

Graduation Year: 2019

Artist Statement:

Through elaborately fabricated set designs, casting calls, and meticulous direction, I create paintings in the lineage of history painting morphed through a postmodern context. The dramatic subjects within my paintings remain intentionally ambiguous, creating a desire within the viewer for explanation while refusing to provide it. Rather than illustrating a clear cut moment of life, I offer up a meditation that forces the viewer to stop and consider the ontological void that this lack of clarity creates.
At once both violent and apathetic, my world is born from the irrational mind of a reckless abandon, where morality and truth are just as fluid as the blood flowing through and out of our veins. The narrative of my work is deeply personal and reflective of concrete stories and emotional occurrences, but the true purpose of my painting is not to didactically illustrate a story or ethical stance. These moments of nothingness, of not-happenings, are crafted in a large scale, painterly realism which demands attention, yet refuses satisfaction. My paintings expose the myth of certainty and purpose by exalting the boredom of existence, and through the slow methodical act of painting, asserting these experiences as worthy of being painted.

Biography:

Elijah River Dion was born and raised in the urban areas of Southern New Hampshire. After many years of struggle, Elijah moved to Portland, Maine and decided to pursue a life in the arts, gravitating toward the medium of oil painting. Elijah received a Bachelor of Fine Art in Painting with minor degrees in Art History and Drawing from the Maine College of Art in 2019. Elijah will be attending the New York Academy of Art in the Fall of 2019 to pursue a Masters of Fine Arts Degree in Painting.