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Visual Arts: Made in Hull, MA

All About Hue

Ask J. Marshall Dyke, what comes first, the concept or the color and he'll tell you that the concept evolves from the color.

Hull resident, J. Marshall Dyke has been working for more than a year on his Hue series of oil paintings. It seems only natural that his work has evolved into this stage, because this is a man who is always thinking color and light.

At 59, he is recently retired from his position as an artist at the VA Hospital in Jamaica Plain and now can do what he has wanted to do since he was a youngster - paint, paint and paint some more, and now can do so in his recently renovated, light filled home studio. He is a self-described "hermit wannabe", but given his busy schedule teaching five classes a week, it is hard to imagine how he has time to be much of a studio hermit.

His artwork is driven by his curiosity about color and light. In this series, rather than putting the paint on a canvas he has been putting the canvas on the paint. He will spend hours mixing paint on his palette, and getting the colors to work well with one another. Then he takes his canvas and lays it on top of his palette and works with what results from that compression.

When you look at these abstract paintings, you start to see familiar objects. But each person looking at the same painting will probably see something different. That's why John encourages the buyers of his abstract series to rotate the paintings and hang them upside down or sideways to experience the painting in many different ways.

A 6-year-old girl visiting the Braintree Art Show was asked which painting she would like to take home. She liked the painting called "Hue: Out of Your Mind", because she could see things into it. This appealing painting is like entering a bubbly world full of playful creatures.

Each painting in the series has an entirely different feel. A hexagon shaped painting called "Hex Hue" left more of a crazed feeling reminiscent of wild fireworks going off in a stormy night.

Throughout this page you will see "Hue Out of Your Mind, displayed right side up, upside down and sideways so that you can see for yourself how the rotations change your impression of the painting.

J. Marshall Dyke has been teaching for 25 years in Braintree Continuing Education Center and at Quincy Adult Education. Presently he is teaching five classes a week. He is the father of three grown children, and Jay has lived in Hull for the past 15 years.

Throughout his life he has always made it a point to paint, even over the many years that he was working three jobs and driving 55 miles to work every day. He has created over 900 paintings, 800 of which are in homes from here to Japan. John knows the whereabouts of many, many of these paintings, because his customers have stayed in touch with him.

There have been many times when John has walked into somebody's house only to be surprised to see his painting hanging on the wall -- a wonderful feeling. He says that sometimes he knows the whereabouts of his paintings more than the whereabouts of his children!

John went to art school after high school, but did not finish school at that time. In 1968 during the Vietnam era he joined the Air Force and was stationed in Germany where he was married and had his first child. John now has three grown children.

In the Air Force as he worked in supply driving a forklift. The artist at the base left, and John became then the base artist. This was before computers, and artists were needed to prepare the signs and graphics to be used in the briefings. When he came back to this area, he attended and graduated from Art Institute Boston, taking night classes while working part-time at Sears and full time in supply at the VA Hospital in Jamaica Plain. He was living in Wareham and teaching art in Braintree at night. When an artist position opened up at the VA Hospital he took that job and worked as a medical illustrator and all-around artist there for 15 years.

Now in "retirement" he is able to focus fully on his painting and teaching. For John the process of art is very "Sherlock Holmes." The process for him is one of experimenting to satisfy his curiosity about what would happen if he used his palette of color or his canvas in different ways. He will shift gears in the middle of a painting just to see what will happen if he tries something completely different and unexpected.

Recently, after working many hours on a painting that seemed to just not be coming together, he decided to just throw green paint on it and see what would happen. He worked with that and liked the result.

Sometimes his best work comes out of his warm-ups, which is just practice sessions with color without any expectations or plans other then to experiment with colors. He tries to finish his paintings as quickly as possible, because once he takes time away from a painting and tries to go back to it, not only has the world moved on, but so has he. He's not the same person in the same space as he was when he started the painting. Ironically he claims some of his best working moments are right before he needs to go out to be somewhere for an appointment or a party.

Once his painting is complete he likes to "put beer into it." To get a little perspective on his painting, he sets it next to the TV, grabs a beer, sits down and watches his painting!

John's work is exhibited in several different locations as well as at his home studio gallery.

He can be contacted by phone, 781--925--9496 or e-mail to Marshallarts35@msn.com

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