Artist Mary Lou Dimsdale "Left and Right Hand" Opening Reception Saturday Nov 9, 6-9pm Tierra del Sol Gallery 945 Chung King Rd., LA CA 90012 Mary Lou Dimsdale engages the world through brightly colored, layered imagery creating a unique visual language that she codifies with text. Most of her paintings contain the presentation of her name that exceeds its identifying role as maker to become a specific codex detailing an important aesthetic element of her practice. Dimsdale uses this connection between her name and world at large as an axis point around which her visual interpretations of ideas, figures and images come into focus, and share a deeper emotional content with the viewer. Like Barbara Kruger, another California artist who uses text, Dimsdale’s written content helps her explore issues around identity. She situates herself — through the placement of her name — to themes of gender and domesticity, labor and play. A closer investigation of this varied placement demonstrates Dimsdale’s skill at using text to highlight the graphic nature of her work, following the tradition of many cubist modernist painters. Dimsdale is inspired by home décor and quotidian scenes she finds in magazines which she extrapolates and distills with special attention to line and color. Other work features human figures and details of anatomy, particularly hands and faces. Like her use of text, these hands are often her own, and she is reminding us of her awareness of her creativity and autonomy as a maker, yet she makes space for a conversation and deep engagement from the viewer. Dimsdale’s hands and faces therefore become an invitation to enter and explore her rich imagination with her, giving the work aspects of a thoughtful social practice. Tierra Del Sol Gallery is proud to feature the work of Mary Lou Dimsdale, a mature artist, who discovered her talent for painting in her sixties. The gallery is excited to share her contributions to our curatorial vision with her first solo exhibition. A strong and vibrant community is one in which all of its members contribute to the strengths and assets for the common good. Tierra’s mission is to empower people with disabilities to fulfill their potential and desire to become productive citizens who are accepted, included and valued for the contributions they make to the economic, civic, and cultural vitality of the community. We are actively working towards the day when people with any type of disability are fully recognized as an integral part of our community — as neighbors, co-workers, and contributors.