Thornton Dial: His Spoken Dreams

Born in poverty in Alabama, Thornton Dial has lived his entire life in the American South. His art, informed by decades of struggle as a black working-class man, reveals a unique perspective on America’s most difficult and pervasive challenges, such as its long history of race and class conflict, the war in Iraq, and the 9/11 tragedy. This book includes beautiful reproductions of Dial’s large-scale paintings, drawings and found object sculptures spanning twenty years of his artistic career. Drawing inspiration from the rich symbolic world of the black rural South, and possessing no formal education, Dial has developed a truly distinctive and original style. Incorporating salvaged objects in his work, from plastic grave flowers and children’s toys to cow skulls and goat carcasses, he creates highly charged assemblages on turbulent fields of expressionistic painting.