If a beautiful sunset on the Texas High Plains or a field of bluebonnets blanketing the side of a hill is your idea of art, then Conner is not your man. Over his five decades-long career as an artist, Dale Conner has infused his work with a message that reaches beyond the picturesque and examines the depths of the human condition. As a young boy, Conner fantasized about piloting a fighter aircraft, and after college he worked in a factory that manufactured five-hundred pound bombs intended to be used on the people of Vietnam. His romantic notions about war were quickly crushed by the reality of the ominous gray steel canisters designed solely for the purpose of destruction. He left that job after one month.

“The madness of war—the horror, the casualties, the destruction—is morally incomprehensible to me,” says Conner. “Using various materials and processes,
I create art out of a desire to expose man’s inhumanity and injustice to his fellow human beings, to other living creatures, and to the planet, using the theme of war and the people who facilitate conflict as my subjects. My work challenges our notions of patriotism and the glorification of combat, confronting the realities of warfare and forcing the viewer to consider these uncomfortable issues in an aesthetic context.”

Despite the works’ dark and shadowy subject matter, Conner’s palette can be bright and cheery, adding a keen sense of irony. His paintings are revelatory; bursting with an animated yet controlled impasto. His portraits are evocative and expressive and, at times, piercing and mysterious. The work speaks both to the aesthetic and to the ethical. Conner’s work, in a word: transcendent.

LISTEN TO AN INTERVIEW WITH DALE CONNER ON HPPR RADIO AMARILLO THAT OCCURRED ON JANUARY 19TH, 2023.

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