Maker/Artist
Dial, Thornton
American painter and sculptor, 1928-2016
Dial began creating art from found objects in the 1980s. In 1987, he began painting full-time. His work explores relationships between races, between men and women, and between God and people. His children and other family members are also artists. His work is in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Some sources give his birth place as Bessemer, Alabama. A steelworker for thirty years, Thornton Dial created painted objects for much of his life before turning to works on canvases in 1987. A self-taught folk artist, Dial built up different mediums on his canvases, and he depicted a mix of human and animal forms. Throughout his works, Dial referenced moments in Black history such as the middle passage and the Los Angeles riots of 1992.
