Through his art, Philip Latimer Dike (Phil Dike) has contributed to the sunny mystique of southern California in the popular imagination. His breezy interpretations of the environs of Los Angeles transformed the look of watercolor in the 1930s, while also capturing the golden land that was beckoning many to the West Coast. Imbibing the methods of Mexican muralists working in California, he translated their improvisational techniques into bold color choices and sweeping paint application. As a consultant to Disney Studios, Dike transmitted these avant-garde lessons to the artists of early feature-length animated films, playing an unsung role in the American fantasy industry.
Born in Redlands, California, Dike's first artistic attempts were in emulation of his grandmother, who made copies of picture postcards. He won a scholarship to the newly-founded Chouinard Art Institute. The artists who studied there had a strong loyalty to each other and to the school. Many of them lived together, shared studios, traveled together, supported each other during the tough times of the Depression, and, like Dike, would go on to teach there. These associations formed the basis of the California Watercolor Society.
After four years at Chouinard with Clarence Hinkle, Dike went to New York to attend the Arts Students League, where he studied with George Luks. In the thirties, he went to France for a year, learning fresco and mural painting at the American Academy in Fountainbleau. When he returned to teach at Chouinard in 1932, he come under the sway of artists such as Jose Clemente Orozco, who was painting a mural at Pomona College; more significantly, he worked directly under David Alfaro Siqueiros, who supervised a collective mural at Chouinard: "The Workers Meeting"(now destroyed) was a controversial depiction of construction workers watching over white and black parents and their children. Through this sequence of instructors, Dike's approach to painting became looser and more spontaneous.
During the Depression, many Los Angeles artists found work as mural painters, motion picture set designers and painters, animators, and illustrators. On the weekends, they would pursue their own creative work at various locations across the fast-growing city. Working quickly and with very little preparatory work engendered a new fresh quality into the views of southern California, and Dike was at the fore of this oncoming tide. From 1927 to 1955, he exhibited more paintings in the California watercolor Society than any other member, and in 1939 he was its president. In the late 30s and 40s, he lived in the Elysian Heights section of Echo Park, and his home remains a landmark of its cultural history.
In 1933, Dike was hired by Disney Studios to teach drawing and composition, and he would also contribute to quality control in looking over final drawings and in color coordination. He is credited with participating in the production of "Snow White" and "Fantasia," particularly the segments "Toccata and Fugue," "Night on Bald Mountain," and "Ave Maria." Of his experience with Disney, Dike told TIME magazine: "You feel as though you were a part of something big and important when you work on a Disney film. One of the greatest things that Disney offers is the discipline of having to sell his stuff by making definite and specific statements in simple, uncomplicated language pictorially speaking." , the lessons of the Communist Siqueiros provided Dike with what he needed.
After World War II, he and Rex Brandt momentarily had their own summer school of painting from 1947 to 1950. At this same time, Dike also began incorporating calligraphy and geometric abstraction into his work. Invited by Millard Sheets in 1950, he became professor of art at Scripps College and Claremont Graduate School until retirement in 1971. In the fifties, Chouinard would fall on hard times, and Walt Disney, who had gained so much from the artists who worked and trained there, transformed the school into Cal Arts in order to continue the stream of studio employees.
