The ever changing and all encompassing Palette of M.J. Levy Dickson
by Lucretia Voigt Contributng Writer
Psychologist Carl Jung may have said it best: "Art is a kind of innate drive that seizes a human being and makes him its instrument. The artist is not a person endowed with free will who seeks his own ends, but one who allows art to realize its purpose through him."

That innate drive took hold of M. J. Levy Dickson at an early age. "My grandmother was an actress who loved art and museums. My mother had a knowledge of antiques, my father's hobby was architecture. In our family anything creative stood apart in some way. There was always that appreciation for art."

That broad spectrum has fueled the fire of imagination in Dickson that has resulted in an immense breadth of work. Most Nantucketers are familiar with Dickson's illustrations in "Wildflowers of Nantucket." Dickson's work travels beyond the flowers that delight our eyes; she also sketches the musicians that exhilarate our ears.

"I draw right in the program of the Boston Symphony," she remarked. "The archivist there has asked to have my drawings that I have sketched in the symphony programs. Right now there's a case at Symphony Hall that has a finished print." Her mother was the first one to take her to the symphony, and Dickson has been using the Boston Symphony as an inspiration since she was 18. "What I try to do is listen to the music, and then when I'm drawing right there, it's that moment," she explained. "I'm listening to the music and drawing the conductor, it's all one and the same. It's not about the conductor, it's not about the music."

Her relationship with music does not end at the Symphony Hall doors. "I listen to music in my studio," she said. "I like to work to classical music or jazz. I like to listen to rhythm and blues. I like drawing orchestras. It's like drinking wine. It's always fun to try something new because some of the pleasure is knowing enough to keep going and experiencing. If I were in Africa listening to juju music, or in the Caribbean listening to calypso, that's all fine. I like listening to music I've never heard before. In New Orleans I listen to zydeco and creole. Everywhere you go you hear something different."

That attitude of the explorer resonates in Dickson's work. From the serenity of her watercolor "Night Vision" to her somber oil "The Waiter," Dickson sees art all around her and interprets it as the art dictates, letting the creation speak through her talent. Recently in New Orleans visiting photographer David C. Halliday, she used her surroundings as her muse. She sketched a drummer who captured her attention because of the serenity on his face. She found uniqueness in each individual plant. "[David Halliday] has been living in New Orleans for about 15 years," she remarked when explaining a recent watercolor. "He has a pomegranate tree in his yard. He cut some pomegranates off and I just sat and drew the pomegranates. Sometimes you don't know where your inspiration is going to come from."

To that end, Dickson is always drawing. She compares her daily art dabbling to the discipline any creative endeavor requires. "When playing any musical instrument, you have to keep doing your scales every day, or otherwise when the music comes to you you're not right there, you're not ready when you go to play," she explained. "I have lots of works in progress, lots of different directions I want to go in. You never know - if I do a drawing and it goes in one direction, that may influence my art for an entire year."

Dickson does not stop at interpreting the world in her art but opens that world up to others. She recently was asked to be an artist-in-residence at the American School in Tangiers. The enrollment is 85 percent Muslim and 15 percent international students, of which only five percent are American. The style of education, however, is American, concentrating on independent thought. She worked mainly with five year olds, an age she finds intriguing and is familiar with from teaching at the Children's House on Nantucket. "I do like working with five year olds. It's a great age," she remarked. "Basically you feel happy, sad, pain, pleasure, and that happens right from the time you are born. At three, you are kind of delighted with everyone. At five, you have opinions and know how you fit into the world. It's exciting because the children can voice an opinion. They're generally not asked to, but they can. It helps them be in touch with their feelings and express what they're thinking in a way that's not threatening and nonjudgmental. If you don't like a color in the painting, it's important to voice that. Once you know what gives you pleasure, what scares you, or why - it captures your mind."

Dickson captures the minds of her students by opening up the experiences to them that will captivate their imagination. "Art is a visual language," she explained when talking about her experience in Tangiers. "We did a couple of projects. For one I said 'Let's go collect leaves and let them dry.' They have eucalyptus trees there, just like we have elms or oaks in this country. There the eucalyptus trees are huge and on the school campus there are about eight of them. I said, 'Each of you pick a leaf from this tree - let me see the leaves - are any two the same? Just like you - you're all in 1st or 2nd grade, but each of you are different, each are unique, but all in the same grade.' It was a way to show them that they are individuals, just like those leaves are unique. Those are the kind of thoughts you can communicate that can bring a better understanding in the world."

Just like in her artwork, Dickson took the exercise further, pushing the children to broaden their experiences. "[The students] don't have the change of seasons like we do," she recounted. "The class was working on autumn and coloring maple leaves. These kids in Morocco are trying to picture what a maple tree looks like in the fall in the mountains," she laughed. "We had a floor mat that was about 3' x 6'. I had [the students] glue their colored leaves on this floor mat so that it made a path. Then we put dried leaves in the middle - and I had them line up, not to talk, just listen. They walked across the floor mat on these dried leaves, and heard crunching, and they were amazed. I said 'If you ever go to the U.S. in the fall and walk through the woods, this is what it sounds like. It's fun to think of what you can do with art that communicates to a child an experience they can't imagine."

It is that desire to experience and to imagine that propels Dickson's art. Upon receiving a compliment in regard to the magnitude of her works, Dickson politely brushes the remark aside. "I'm actually feeling I'm too narrow and I need to expand. I love to travel because I see something a different way. I see something working in a different media, and I think 'Wow, I never thought about that.' This year, I need to do more exploring with different textures and different media, and observing different patterns." She is the instrument of the art inside of her, and the compositions are

music to our eyes. I