Growing up in America in the 1980s, James Dillon Wright, known as Dillon Boy, was exposed to pop culture. Aside from his skateboard, his favourite thing to do was to go to the comic store. Creativity was encouraged early on through private drawing lessons.
His first career goal was to be a comic book artist at Marvel, and he applied there when he was 12. Although he didn't get a job, he did get a package of instructions for drawing and writing comics. Motivated by this, he began to capture his heroes of the comics on paper. His first sale at the age of 14 proved that he was talented as well as enthusiastic.
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Dillon Boy's great art lies in bringing the well-known characters from the Marvel comics or Disney films into new and surprising situations - often with a pinch of eroticism. The surprise element and the tricky eye-candy fascinate the viewer. It is therefore not surprising that Dillon Boy's works have fans and collectors all over the world and have been exhibited in many countries.
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Dillon Boy's stenciled and acrylic paint work is not limited to fictional characters. He also portrays famous personalities from the film and music world and from politics. The best example of this is a portrait of Barack Obama from 2008. The work The Blue Knight was created in the course of Obama's presidential campaign, for which Shepard Fairey created his well-known HOPE poster. Dillon Boy's portrait, like Fairey's, was featured in TIME magazine. Along with the mysterious British artist Banksy, Fairey is one of Dillon Boy's greatest sources of inspiration from the street and pop art scene.
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But it is not only these contemporaries that inspire Dillon Boy, he also admires the masters of past centuries. Already in high school, he became interested in the Old Masters of European art history, but also in the great portraitist of the Art Deco era, Tamara de Lempicka.
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He was able to really immerse himself in the past during a stay of several years in Italy, during which he traveled all over Europe to see the art and to draw in his style. His absolute favourite was Botticelli's famous Venus, but he was also particularly taken with the ancient Nike of Samothrace, who watches over a staircase in the Louvre.
If you're interested in buying Dillon Boy art, check out his website. Since his paintings and prints are often sold out there, every collector should definitely keep an eye on the auction market where his works sell for affordable prices.