Kim Dingle

Kim Dingle (born 1951) is a Los Angeles-based contemporary artist working in paint, sculpture and installation.

Dingle was born in Pomona, California. Her family moved to Los Angeles when she was two months old. In 1988, she earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Cal State Los Angeles and in 1990, a Master of Fine Arts from Claremont Graduate School.

Her first solo exhibition, “Portraits from the Dingle Library”, combined images of her mother, Cram, with portraits of iconic figures like George Washington, Queen Elizabeth II and George Foreman. Her inspiration for these works began with her mother’s belief that she is related to both George Washington and Queen Elizabeth II.

Shortly after the Cram portrait series, Kim Dingle began a critique of girlhood innocence with a character based on Dingle’s niece, Wadow, who exhibited surprising violent bursts as a result of prenatal brain damage. Wadow was a major source of inspiration for the new girl characters in Dingle's art. Dingle often inserted this version of Wadow and her cohorts, the "Wild Girls", into well-known historic scenes. These images reclaim famous American myths like George Washington and the cherry tree for her fleshy heroines and question the semiotics of patriotism. For example, in Untitled (Girls with Dresspole) (1998), Dingle’s leading ladies raise a "dresspole" (a long pole with a dress attached to the top) in a pose reminiscent of the famous photograph of soldiers raising the flag on Iwo Jima.

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