Phil Dike: A Bird’s Eye View

Phil Dike: A Bird’s Eye View will present the Claremont Lewis Museum of Art’s first major exhibition of this influential and innovative artist. Dike was one of the first artists in the 1930s to develop what became known as the California Style of watercolor painting. An influential and admired teacher to hundreds of students, he taught at the Chouinard Art Institute, Scripps College and Claremont Graduate School, and founded the Brandt-Dike Summer School of Painting with fellow watercolorist Rex Brandt.

Phil Dike was best known for his coastal scenes where natural energies collide, waves crashing against the rocks of an ever-changing coastline while seabirds skim the waters in search of food. Dike employed raw confident brushstrokes to describe these lively scenes, at times verging into abstraction. Some of his most captivating paintings assume the perspective of a bird’s eye view. These imagined views of real scenes involve an interpretation of landscape that goes beyond simple representation.