Peeping In, a self-portrait, shows a man bemused and befuddled, wearing a sweatshirt that pictures Homer Simpson in a Batman costume: Everyman as Superhero. He peers through a web of roots and branches, Dial's life-metaphoric device. He is an outsider looking in, a mortal trying to comprehend the mystical universe, a black man trying to understand the white establishment, an artist trying to make sense of the new community into which he has been thrust. The network of roots is decorated with paintings of faces, some of them reverse paintings on Plexiglas. They are another Dial device, signifying life as a mystery filled with dichotomies, delicate and resilient, opaque and decipherable. The outsider looking in realizes that he may very well be the insider looking out.
