Dylan Lisle is a British figurative painter. He studied at Gray’s School of Art in Aberdeen, graduating in 2000, and has since developed a practice rooted in classical techniques with contemporary sensibilities.

Lisle worked from studios in Aberdeen and Edinburgh for many years before relocating to Manchester in 2014. He is now based at 1853 Studios in Oldham working as both a painter and tattooist.

His work has been exhibited extensively across Scotland and England, with solo exhibitions in London, Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Manchester as well as group shows in New York, London, Eton, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Manchester.

A man holding a mug stands next to a mannequin dressed as a monk and an artwork of a woman with a red cloak and animal skulls, with two small wooden sculptures on top.
Statement
My oil paintings of people and animals use a language of symbolism and motifs to explore the shifting psychological relationships between people, cultures and value systems.

The technique of the work is integral to its message. I paint in complex layers using combinations of indirect painting techniques borrowed from my studies of the old masters. The aesthetic of imprimatura, grisaille and glazing evoke a sense of tradition, history and craftsmanship at odds with the flashy immediacy of the world we now inhabit.

The work is aimed at viewers interested in culture as a system of meaning - particularly those considering how values, empathy, and social understanding are formed and transmitted. It asks whether traditional narrative structures that once carried communal knowledge are being transformed or displaced within digital culture, and what this shift might mean for contemporary experience.