As the natural end of the artist’s life approached, Dial increasingly turned his eye to asofter palette and scenes with fewer specific visual elements and a tendency to leavethe viewer with more questions than answers. The subjects were also more gearedeither to memories of the distant past or vague notions of what lies beyond the grave.Such is the work, Life on the Moon, which appears to simply depict a figure exploringthe moon’s surface constructed from recycled and crumpled metals. Anyone familiarwith Dial’s work cannot help but think of an earlier painting titled Changes of the Moon,2003, depicting Martin Luther King, Jr. incarcerated in the Birmingham Jail and tracingtime through the phases of the moon. This work feels much less specific but is perhapsindicative of the aging artist exploring the concept of a new world to be discovered afterdeath. Indeed, Dial would pass away within two years of this work’s creation.