Atlanta-based artist rEN Dillard uses craft to create visions of what the future could look like

On the “City Lights” series “Speaking of Art,” local artists share insights into their influences, processes, and experiences in town. This edition focuses on rEN Dillard, an Atlanta-based multimedia artist, and painter.

“My work is sort of a fine arts vision board of what the future would look like if humanity kind of figured it all out, and came up with solutions to a lot of our problems,” said Dillard. He cautiously acknowledges the term Afro-futurism as relating to his art, though he doesn’t prefer it himself. But to Dillard, Afro-Futurism is “a look at the future through a Black cultural lens,” a movement of which his own art is a striking example. 

Dillard’s work encompasses stylized portraiture as well as surrealist landscapes, some of which he calls “dreamscapes.” He also uses collage and mixed media textures in many pieces, always evoking an otherworldliness in his subjects and their environments. Keeping his inner child alive through art is a priority – Dillard says, “I’ve been an artist and a creator my entire life. I think Picasso said it best when he said, ‘Every child is an artist. The problem… is how to remain an artist when you become an adult.'” His work is imbued with a fascination for the microscopic as well as the macroscopic, and UFOs sometimes appear alongside birds, insects and microbes, with dreamlike human figures navigating the space between.