Following her last show in New York, the artist, finding herself in need of strong coffee, portioned out a space in her Los Angeles studio and opened a public coffee bar with unusual extra fare of soups, salads and fondue. Dingle named this enterprise Fatty’s. Almost instantly upon opening this modest venture, the artist unwittingly began a journey down – down-down into the bottomless pit of a vortex known as the Food Service Industry-tough for professionals and devastating for amateurs. But, Fatty’s soon boomed out of control into a popular supper house and wine bar.

After five years of slinging vegetarian equivalent fancy hash on this runaway freight train of a job, the artist went back into the studio by day to create Studies for the Last Supper. Dingle is not referencing Da Vinci’s painting, The Last Supper. She says she hasn’t seen it lately. The title Last Supper simply appeals to a reluctant restauranteur.

With her signature gestural brushwork, Dingle creates scenes of foreboding and chaos against the backdrop of white plates, wooden tables and colorful garbage. Using a palette described by one critic as “evocative of both the sepia tones of daguerreotype photographs and the dark paintings of Zurbarán and Goya,” the artist imbues these scenes of frolic and frenzy with an ethereal glow. Dingle’s usual protagonists-the fat white frocked everygirls-previously gripped by a mindless and inexplicable violence against nature and each other, are now suddenly consumed by the urgency, drama and brutal stress of Fine Dining.