Jarid del Dio is a painter living and working in Maine. His oil paintings utilize the New England landscape as a tested vehicle for investigating color, shape and composition. Del Dio prefers a long contemplative study of his surroundings, plucking out details that best describe a place.
After completing his BFA in painting and printmaking at the University of New Hampshire, del Dio spent over a decade working in the performing arts in the Pacific Northwest and Europe. In 2022 he settled in Maine and turned his focus back to painting. Del Dio exhibits regularly on both coasts and has work in private collections through North American and Europe.
Del Dio writes, “As my approach to landscape painting evolves, I am less concerned with a one-to-one visual documentation of my environment. I am still working from my observed surroundings but I am more interested in painting the felt experience of being in a place. My responsibility towards composition, shape, color, and value is inescapable, but I am more comfortable changing what I consider visual accuracy for something that is more spiritually expressive. I do have a viewer in mind when I paint and want to make work that is believable and relatable. A painting could be considered successful if it causes the viewer to reflect on their own relationship to the environment. I attempt to facilitate this by describing the atmosphere and heightened specialness of a place. I will often use a dramatic light source, compositional framing, or layered space to lead the viewer into the painting. I paint in oil, usually on panel, and I will work on a painting over a few weeks (or more) making changes until I feel like it carries the same level of interest as the real life subject. I typically have several paintings in various states of completion goin at once and I like the carrying ideas across different panels. I don’t consider groups of work a series but they will often have a shared palette, similar mark making or varied approaches to the same subject.”
Del Dio’s work will appear in “Wild Thing” a group Show opening at Cadlbeck on September 5, 2025.
