"I couldn't have painted when I was younger. Now I can, and I'm bursting with ideas. My still life's use the puppets, dolls and toys that populate my home in Berkeley. I'm trying to achieve, in NY Times critic Michael Kimmelman's words: 'a mirror we hold up that looks different to everyone who sees it, and whose beauty lies as much in us, and our capacity to dream as it does in what is on the canvas.' These last few years have been focused on painting portraits and the figure of models and friends. The work has become less factual and more, for lack of a better term, impressionist. I rely on instinct to direct the color and form of the painting still in search of a personal style."
- Dick Whitlock 2018
Richard Charles "Dick" Whitlock, an insatiably curious artist who never missed a chance to celebrate life with friends and family, died of cancer on April 4, 2021. He was 74. After serving in the military, he worked in Berkeley as a commercial printer from the 1970's. Always an active draughtsman, he began indulging his passion for painting and sculpture later in life. He has had a solo exhibition at Ohmega Salvage and New Amsterdam Cafe and has exhibited at the Berkeley Art Center.
