A love of history and a sense of place, the joy of family, the intrigue of music and a sense of social awareness all combine and recombine as central threads in my artwork. There is a beating rhythm in life, an unseen central beat, that compels us to return, again and again, to those people and things that compel us and bring us joy. These people and things, ideas and affections, build and overlap, creating personal layers within us that define who we are. There is an essence and mystery of life that is defined by the interplay of these layers, and the artistic process is a way for me to give form to those unseen rhythms and intriguing themes that I find compelling. My creative process embraces this idea, as a way to give form to this complexity that lies under our common skin, through the use of artistic layering, targeted lighting and physical depth in each piece. I create primarily large scale narrative sculptures and wall pieces, employing painted canvasses combined with a wide variety of found objects. My goal when creating artwork is to present something that is immediately engaging, consistently compelling, and leaves a lasting impression beyond the initial encounter, and I feel that this mixed media approach gives me the best set of tools to achieve this end. Furthermore, each of my pieces tells a story, or has a central theme, and this use of a variety of elements and perspectives focus the artistic expression of each piece. I believe that art should provide a small sense of wonder and delight, and I have also always felt that painting and sculpture are, along with the creative vision, something to be built. My love of that constructive process is always present in the finished piece of artwork, as important to me as realizing a coherent, complex and compelling artistic expression.

"The lobby gallery features Spokane artist Dinning, who plays with muted colors, abstract backgrounds, faceless human figures, and realistic animal depictions. The effect is as warmly folkloric as it is vaguely spooky." THE STRANGER, APRIL, 2018

The mixed media approach allows me to create sculptural pieces that can also hang on the wall. This allows me to play with both two dimensional and three dimensional perspectives within each piece of artwork. To see more of my mixed-media paintings and wall pieces click here

My first love has always been sculpture, and I enjoy working both two dimensional and three dimensional aspects into my free-standing works of art. This gives me greater freedom to work with aspects of spatial manipulation, movement, light and shadow that I am not as able to do as well with my wall-hanging pieces. To see more of my mixed-media sculptural pieces click here

I have recently started working on pieces created in series - a collection of individual pieces that taken together complete a full series of work, but each piece is a unique work of art on it’s own. To see my series page click here

Here is where you’ll find a listing of current and past shows, plus links to press articles and some of my favorite places. Check it out here

For information about any of the works of art, or maybe about pricing on anything, or maybe about commissioning me for a unique work, or, really, about anything else, head to my contact, commissions & pricing page here