Fireplace Tiles c. 1936

Curator: Here we have what's believed to be a preparatory sketch for a set of fireplace tiles created around 1936. Editor: First impression? A quiet scene, almost like a memory rendered in sepia tones. It’s gentle. Melancholy, maybe. Curator: Quite! John Dixon is the artist, and this initial concept employs drawing as its medium before its translation to the eventual ceramic tiles. I am struck by how intimate, nearly miniature, it is. The composition has elements of figuration and landscape which together create a kind of genre-painting vignette, almost as if one is peering into a small private world. Editor: Yes, a fleeting narrative. There's a pair embracing, and a horse stands nearby, adorned quite theatrically—it makes me think of storybook illustrations or even tapestries, something vaguely medieval in its aura. I do wonder if it would actually be so easy to pick out that the embrace, that quiet intimate interaction, among all of those repetitive tiles, if you weren't paying so close attention? The beauty of its creation is also paradoxically almost negated, its message obscured, when it becomes a tile for a mundane fireplace... Curator: Interesting, that observation reveals perhaps some of our biases towards utility and domestic artwork, in that we consider these tiles that are literally at the hearth of family interaction so separate and alienated. But think, might Dixon seek precisely to ennoble the domestic sphere through a familiar depiction of, dare I say it, genre-paintings depicting figures in that public-intimate display we call a social encounter, albeit stylized? It allows, instead, an interior drama—domestic intimacy imbued into daily family interactions, with romance perhaps—where its presence is not as loudly enunciated, not a heroic pose nor loud painting—a subtle narrative, if you will. Editor: So, rather than diminishing the art, it elevates the mundane moments of home life? A subversive, almost silent rebellion? Curator: I suppose we shall never know the full extent of Mr. Dixon's domestic ideals! Editor: Well, I definitely find myself rethinking my initial impressions—and perhaps rethinking my entire kitchen now. Thanks for that!