Reba Dickerson-Hill was a self-taught Philadelphia artist who painted in the ancient Japanese ink-and- brush technique called sumi-e. She was also a watercolorist and oil painter who primarily produced landscapes and portraits.
Early life and education
Dickerson-Hill was born in West Philadelphia on February 18, 1918, to Evan Thomas Dickerson and Reba Henrietta Tyree Dickerson. One of six children, she started drawing when she was about 4 years old. Her father and an elementary school principal recognized her talent. As a youth, she spent some time sketching along Benjamin Franklin Parkway near the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
She attended Overbook High School and enrolled at Cheyney State Teachers College. She graduated in 1940 with a Bachelor of Science degree in education. A 1940 article in the Baltimore Afro American newspaper about Cheyney's graduates noted that she was an artist and planned to make it her career. She taught elementary grades in the Philadelphia School District starting around 1949. During the 1960s, she was an assistant professor of fine arts at Cheyney. She gave up teaching around 1966 to become a full-time artist.
Her career as painter
Dickerson-Hill worked in several mediums: watercolor, oil, collage, mixed media, pen and ink, ink and brush, sumi-e, sculpture, calligraphy and acrylics. She also produced prints.
She was a self-taught artist, with no formal art-school degree. In Philadelphia, she learned painting techniques from Claude Clark (in the mid-1940s) and Paul Keene; printing from printmaker/painter/illustrator Jerome Kaplan; calligraphy from Marvin Bileck, and kinesthetic Chinese watercolor techniques from Ramon Fina, known for his expertise in the ancient tradition of Chinese brush painting.
She first learned about Eastern art techniques from Fina when she studied at the Barnes Foundation around 1947. In 1959, she attended a presentation by Fina at the Plastic Club, a women’s art organization, in Philadelphia.
Dickerson-Hill studied at Temple University, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of the Arts/Philadelphia College of the Arts, Pendle Hill in Wallingford, PA, and the University of Exeter, England. In 1950, she was a member of Les Beau Arts, a group of African Americans in the arts, music and literature. Artist Benjamin Britt was also a member.
In 1946, Dickerson-Hill was in a show to support young Black artists sponsored by the Henry O. Tanner Memorial Fund. The exhibit was held at the Wharton Centre, a social service agency in North Philadelphia that hosted a youth arts program and exhibits. The artworks were donated to various community organizations. Her painting “Still Life” went to St. Christopher's Hospital for Children and “Study No. 2” to the Crime Prevention Association.
She participated in a series of exhibitions at Cheyney in 1956 as an alumna and in 1966 as a faculty member. The 1966 exhibit was the college's first Fine Arts Festival, and she was one of three faculty members represented. Among her entries were watercolors, according to an unidentified newspaper article that appeared to be a campus publication. The watercolors were “The Boatman,” “The Bay” and “What is Man.” Two of her oil paintings were also shown, “Metropolis” and “Nisi Dominus Frustra,” as well as a portrait of William P. Young, who was Pennsylvania's second Black cabinet member as secretary of Labor and Industry.
Dickerson-Hill's oil painting “Study in Copper and Bronze” won first prize by popular vote in a 1969 art exhibit at the branch office of Liberty Federal Savings and Loan Association in the Germantown section of Philadelphia. She had exhibited at the bank before, in 1960, in a solo show of 45 paintings and drawings.
She was also represented in three major exhibits of Black artists in 1969 and 1971. She was one of 100 artists from around the country in an exhibit sponsored by the Philadelphia School District and the Museum of the Philadelphia Civic Center in 1969. In 1971, she was featured in an Aesthetic Dynamics' exhibit organized by artist Percy Ricks in Wilmington, DE, which drew 75 artists from New York to Washington, DC. Also in 1971, she participated in the National Exhibition of Black Artists at the Smith-Mason Gallery in Washington, DC.
In 1960, she also was featured at the Pyramid Club, a social organization of Black professional men that held an annual art exhibit starting in 1941. Others on hand were Howard N. Watson, Benjamin Britt, Robert Jefferson, Samuel J. Brown Jr. and Dox Thrash.
She was a member of the Philadelphia Watercolor Club (where she was board member and life member) and the Philadelphia Print Club.