Arrington De Dionyso

Artist: Arrington de Dionyso, In All Things, Eternity

Artist Statement:

With this series of large sumi ink drawings, I hope to channel a sense of myth, magic, and mystery; to celebrate Imagination as the primary universal force thrusting all good things into motion, and to reflect upon the powers of intuition gained through connection to

the natural world around us. My drawings are “psychedelic” but not overbearingly so- they are full of movement as flower-like entities become pollinating birds, wings become eyes, and faces become constellations. Lines of ink dance and twist into labyrinthine forms with a childlike sense of wonder and an innate musicality that I feel akin to the absurd dancing faces one might sometimes catch in soft clouds or knots of wood. Some viewers posit that my work evokes a feeling of timelessness- and yes, reference points to hieroglyphic languages do abound in the imagistic mimicry of linguistic syntax. Rather than trying to “read” a specific meaning or symbolic message in these wild scribbles, I encourage you to relax the mind’s eye, follow the music. Imagine tracing the spirit of over 40,000 years of human mark-making – from the earliest cave paintings of prehistory- all the way to this long-empty storefront in Downtown Olympia. 

Bio:

Arrington de Dionyso is an artist and musician based in Olympia since 1992. His paintings depict the variety of psychic explorations one might expect as a visual representation of his music. Mythical entities such as dragons, giant crows, and tiger-human hybrids interweave in ritual interplay recalling Arrington’s devoted studies of archetypal psychology and tantric invited him to design a series of prints and embroideries for the SS 2015 Men’s Collection.