Artist Bryce Alexander Dixon
The Creative Edit: Bryce Alexander Dixon
Posing five questions to new emerging contemporary artists and creatives, we take an informal yet quick and engaging view of their creative practice. Viewers get to discover more about the new generation of artists + creatives helping shape and narrate the creative landscape.
Bryce Alexander Dixon (b. 1999) is an African-American multidisciplinary artist of Panamanian and Puerto Rican descent, currently based in New Jersey. Entirely self-taught, his practice spans painting and photography, with a particular focus on portraiture as a site of cultural reclamation and visual sovereignty. Through richly stylized compositions, Dixon seeks to affirm and immortalize Black and Brown presence, foregrounding the politics of fashion, gesture, and self-presentation as forms of power and memory.
What opened the door for you into the world of painting?
Honestly it was something I wanted to just try out at first and it stuck. I’ve always been interested in creating things since I was a child but painting was something I got to fully grasp as I got older to express myself and the world around me. As I developed my skills, knowledge and identity in the art world my purpose has become clear that I want to capture and immortalize family, friends and miscellaneous individuals.
Your portraits are striking and so well balanced. Several of your works are titled with affirmations or spiritual phrases (e.g. Chetachi (Remember God)). How do language and naming shape the emotional tone or intention behind each portrait?
Language plays a deeply intentional role in my work. The titles are never just descriptors, they’re extensions of the portraits themselves. Using affirmations or spiritual phrases like “Chetachi” (Remember God) creates a dialogue between the visual and the verbal. It helps root each portrait in a deeper emotional and cultural context, often drawing from ancestral memory, faith, or the kind of quiet strength passed down through generations. Naming is also a way for me to honor the unseen layers of my subjects; their resilience, their spiritual grounding, and their lived experiences. I want each name or phrase to feel like a blessing or a reminder, something that resonates beyond the image. The words guide the viewer’s emotional entry point, setting a tone of reverence, affirmation, or healing even before fully engaging with the portrait.
In capturing Black identity, how do you approach elements like skin tone, texture, expression, and environment to convey vulnerability?
When capturing Black identity, I approach elements like skin tone, texture, expression, and environment with deep care and intentionality. Skin tone is not just a color it's a living archive of history and beauty. I pay close attention to the richness and variations of skin tone and texture because those details carry so much weight. They speak to presence, survival, and individuality in a world that often tries to flatten or generalize the Black experience. Expression is where I often find vulnerability most visible. A soft gaze, a moment of stillness, or an unguarded posture can reveal layers of tenderness and truth that words sometimes can’t. I want my subjects to feel like they are not performing, but being truly authentic.
How do you harness color, light, and composition to evoke emotional atmospheres such as serenity, nostalgia, empowerment, in your portraits? Which elements are deliberate versus intuitive?
I just trust my judgment on how I pick my subjects to evoke these emotional atmospheres such as serenity, nostalgia, and empowerment. I know exactly what I’m looking for when I create a portrait. And that’s an amalgamation of a 80s-90s to 2000s vibe that I look for. Sometimes I accentuate the posture to make the portrait look more stoic or even add an element/object that wasn’t originally there to add a depth of detail and question.
Looking forward, how do you envision your portrait practice evolving as landscapes of Black identity and beauty continue to shift? Are there new forms, media, or concepts you’re eager to explore?
Looking forward I can definitely envision my portrait practice evolving more into photography or even sculpture. But as of now I’m just focused on the present and continuing to do what I’m doing.
Images + bio are courtesy of the artist.