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Bill Dixon. Rainbow Rocks. Print, 5/100. No date.
Bill Dixon. Rainbow Rocks. Print, 5/100. No date.
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Metadata
Title
Rainbow Rocks
Edition
5/100
Artist
Dixon, Bill
Biography
1928-2015 – Although art making was a constant for him, Bill Dixon also worked as a United Church minister and psychiatric social worker, living in numerous places across western Canada. After his first year as a United Church minister, he took a year off to work on a fine arts degree at the Winnipeg School of Art.
Dixon painted eight murals in his lifetime. Over 40 years ago, he painted a mural in Sooke, BC that illustrates how the logging industry has been a part of Vancouver Island history. In 2023, artists Diego Narvaez, Shelley Davies from the T’Sou-ke Nation and Micah McCarty of the Pacheedaht Nation collaborated to renew the mural. They aim to pay tribute to Dixon’s contributions, safeguard the iconic image representing Sooke’s past, and offer a glimpse into the future of the forests. As representatives of both the T’Sou-ke and Pacheedaht nations, Davies and McCarty will lead the content of the part of the mural to be renewed. Bill Dixon died at the age of 87 in Grand Forks, BC.
Essay
Bill Dixon was a well-traveled painter, printmaker, draftsman and muralist. He painted prairie scenes, mountains and seascapes, and created abstract work and constructive pieces from found objects along the beaches of Vancouver Island. His subjects were boathouses in Victoria’s Fisherman’s Bay, lighthouses on Vancouver Island, forests near Kenora, Ontario and old barns or abandoned vehicles in Manitoba.
“Visual arts have been the continuing thread of my life. Other disciplines have been studied and experienced in other carers. I have pulpit-preached and people-pastored. I have organized community resources and comfort-counselled fearful souls, young and old. I have played on stage and sung in choirs. I have been an art educator and have opened unseeing eyes to the beauty around and within...I am most healthy, most alive, when I am creating a perfect world within the rectangle. The painting is free to travel when held within a frame. The most important painting is the next one.” Quote from Bill Dixon’s Artist Statement in his obituary, https://www.mhfh.com/obituaries/Rev-William-John-DIXON-BA-MDiv-BSW-BFA?obId=34736734
