Take a Walk to The Journal Gallery at 45 White Street in Tribeca and experience an intimate exhibition of painting, collage and mixed-media work by the artist and actor Matt Dillon. Born 1964 in New Rochelle, NY, Dillon has been focused on making art for the last ten years after several decades of imaginative experimentation. 

Dillon’s immediate and extended family members had already presented him with an artistic legacy as painters and cartoonists, offering both inspiration and a history of non-conformity. Then, during the late 1970s, came the distraction of being discovered and becoming a successful actor and teen idol of sorts with the films My Bodyguard and Little Darlings. The trajectory was unstoppable, putting everything else on hold. Dillon went on to make both highly acclaimed and wildly popular films including The Outsiders and Drugstore Cowboy followed by his later work in To Die For, There’s Something About Mary and Crash, the role that earned him an Academy Award nomination.

Photo by Elisabet Davidsdotter

Despite success as an actor, there was an inherent desire to create in an entirely different way, and the freedom and enthusiasm to do just that eventually returned. Newly formed friendships, connections, and, to a degree, his exposure to what was happening in the art world seemed to buoy Dillon’s urge to create with paint and paper. Finding time, motivation, and the occasional yet necessary apartness came about during long stretches of downtime while filming on location, and by the 1990s he was bringing along whatever art supplies would fit in his suitcase. Apparently, the downtime and the suitcase filled with supplies were the stepping stones that became the bridge, and by 2016 Dillon found himself a proper studio to work in. It was then only a matter of time before he was working with a new and very different script, and following his own direction.

Matt Dillon, Coastal Landscape (2026). Photo courtesy of The Journal Gallery

This brings us to the here and now—Matt Dillon at The Journal Gallery, for a show of his most recent work. Personal and intimate, with a sense of heartfelt openness rather than the confines of formality, this new body of work is the inspired result of Dillon’s time in the West African country of Senegal while working on the 2025 film The Fence, directed by Claire Denis. Working on paper as well as several larger canvases, Dillon offers up his observations and experience with both the Senegalese locale and its locals, most importantly the children. Dillon then asked some of the children to draw in his sketchbook and write their names. Several of those names appear in his work at The Journal Gallery.

 

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Given all of those influences and interactions the new pieces have taken on a childlike spirit, touching on aspects of a gentle primitivism, naïveté, and Outsider Art, while Dillon’s easy and natural mark-making avoids any calculated effort to conform to the constructs of traditional or formal composition. The results can only be described as beautiful. Entering the gallery, I stood there for a moment and smiled.

“Matt Dillon: Porto-Novo to Abomey” is on view at The Journal Gallery, 45 White Street, Tribeca, through May 23. Tuesday through Saturday, 10 am–6 pm.

Featured image: Installation view of “Porto-Novo to Abomey.” Courtesy of The Journal Gallery.

Richard Boch is the author of The Mudd Club Book and a regular contributor to Stories and his column Take A Walk.