Jennifer Dickson was born in Piet Retief, South Africa, on 17 September 1936. She arrived in London, England in 1954 to study painting and printmaking at Goldsmiths College of Art until 1959, after which she apprenticed at Stanley William Hayter's Atelier 17 printmaking studio in Paris between 1960 and 1965. Despite only living in England for a total of ten years between 1954 and 1969, Dickson was influential in developing and teaching printmaking, most notably establishing the graduate printmaking programme at Brighton College of Art (now University of Brighton) in the mid-1960s.
Photographer, painter, printmaker and lecturer Jennifer Dickson was born in Piet Retief, South Africa, on 17 September 1936. Struck with polio at age two, and with early mobility issues, she was home-schooled until the age of eight. She moved to England in 1954 in order to escape the increasing violence and divisions in her native country, but also, as she stated in an interview with Ottawa Art Gallery in 2018, because she believed that as a white person the most positive thing she could do for South Africa was to leave. Dickson’s entryway into England was made possible when she obtained a place to study painting and printmaking at Goldsmiths College of Art, London between 1954 and 1959. Subsequently, Dickson was awarded a scholarship from the French government to undertake an apprenticeship with famed English printmaker Stanley William Hayter at his prestigious Atelier 17 studio in Paris, training there between 1960 and 1965. During her time studying with Hayter, Dickson’s work moved away from an intuitive approach to printmaking and towards his more rigorously analytic method, her emotionality fused with calculated risk-taking. The experience gave her the network and skills to hold her first solo exhibition of paintings and prints at the New Vision Centre Gallery (NVCG) in London in 1962. NVCG was founded and directed by Denis Bowen (also born in South Africa), and favoured abstract art with an international outlook. Exhibiting other notable young artists such as Aubrey Williams and Peter Blake, NVCG gave Dickson traction within the London art scene and led to more exhibitions in England and abroad.
Dickson returned to England in 1965. The same year, she held a solo exhibition at Zwemmer Gallery, London (established by refugee, Anton Zwemmer), was elected member of the Royal Society of Painters, Etchers and Engravers, and began a teaching post at Brighton College of Art (now University of Brighton), East Sussex. Dickson quickly became aware that the offerings in print and photography were lacking, and so she established the graduate printmaking programme at the college. Ensuring photography was incorporated in the programme’s teachings, Dickson was a highly regarded mentor among her students, including the etcher and watercolourist Michael Chaplin between 1966–67. During her time at Brighton, she held a solo exhibition at the University of Sussex Art Centre in 1967 and exhibited with the British Council’s touring exhibition, British Printmakers 1968-1970, between 1968 and 1969.
Despite leaving England for Canada in 1969 (where she gained citizenship in 1974), Dickson had already begun to establish an international reputation as an artist beforehand, and she has maintained a presence in the British art scene ever since. In 1970, she was elected as an Associate of the Royal Academy of Arts (ARA), London, and was elevated to Royal Academician (RA) in 1976. This period of Dickson’s work is permeated by figuration focussing on the body and concepts of beauty. In 1980, however, suffering from a lung condition caused by years of exposure to toxic chemicals and fuels in printmaking classes and workshops, Dickson ‘found herself yearning to spend time in a garden in England’ with her camera; and, consequently, she came back to England to create a series of photographs in the gardens of Haddon Hall, Chatsworth and Castle Howard (Korp, 2002). Signalling a move towards beauty in the garden and landscape, Dickson’s 1987 book, The Hospital for Wounded Angels, was chosen by the Association of Canadian Publishers as the Canadian book for presentation at the London Book Fair in 1988.
Since the 1980s, Dickson’s work has continued to focus almost exclusively on photography within landscape gardens. Between 2005 and 2006, she held a solo show at the RA entitled Sanctuary: A Landscape of the Mind. In addition to exhibitions in England, Dickson has travelled and exhibited widely, also spending time in the USA and Jamaica. She currently lives and works in Ottawa, Canada. Her artworks can be found in many UK public collections, including the British Museum, British Council, Royal Academy of Arts, and the Victorian and Albert Museum.
Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Jennifer Dickson]
Publications related to [Jennifer Dickson] in the Ben Uri Library