Bio

Dion Salvador Lloyd is a contemporary British painter, known predominantly for his landscapes. All around him in his home and his studio are scattered remnants and objects collected from places he has been and journeys he has taken, sources of inspiration and insights into his nature.  Dion is drawn to the history of natural things, their stories and mysteries.  He is driven by this connection with the world around him, using painting as a way of telling us who he is, expressing those elusive things that can’t be put into words. 

His own story starts in 1967 in Brighton, England.  Given a name made-for-remembering by his father, a sculptor and vintage car collector, Dion worked for years in London hotels until a fire in his flat destroyed all he owned and he was forced to start again with a blank canvas, taking the opportunity to travel Europe for 6 months and reassess his life. Dion has always had a unique sensitivity and sensory connection with the world around him, obsessed with music and the emotional journeys and emotive responses it triggered within him, but it wasn’t until this point, on a beach in Turkey, that he realised these were the key ingredients for a career as an artist.

He is a prolific and self-taught painter with peaks of inspiration and bursts of creativity, working in hotspots and purple patches that gives his work its energy and dynamism.  His disciplined work ethic means he is always busy, developing and moving between medium and scales and subject matter, intuitively changing and developing his languages of paint and painting.  The character and confidence of his paintings has shifted as his journey has unfolded, each exhibition of his work has grown in both subtlety and power.

After several years as a member of an artist cooperative studio in a disused photographic factory, Dion now has a studio that is its polar opposite; a space full of light and birdsong, looking out onto countryside near Lewes.  This is soulfood for him, creating a more direct relationship between his sources of inspiration and the easel.

Each May for the last 24 years, Dion has invited the public to his home as part of the Artist Open Houses in the Brighton Festival, where they not only get to see the latest work straight from the studio, but get the chance to discover what makes him tick and fires his practice.   It is this openness that characterises Dion as an artist; his paintings come from the heart and their warmth engages with people.

He thrives on setting goals and targets for himself; in 2017 he achieved the distinction of his paintings being selected and hung in each of the Royal Academies in the UK and has 2 paintings selected for the Royal Society of British Painters exhibition at the Mall Galleries in 2018.  Dion Salvador Lloyd is also represented by several prestigious galleries in London and the UK with an ever-growing profile of successful solo exhibitions.

Sam Lock 2018