Laddie John Dill, a Los Angeles native, was born in Long Beach and attended Santa Monica High School. He graduated from Chouinard Art institute in 1968. At age 28, Dill had his first one-man exhibit at the Ileana Sonnabend Gallery in New York. Dill’s list of exhibitions include galleries and museums from such venues as Seoul, Paris, Nagoya, Japan, Helsinki, and Finland; to New York, Kansas City, Seattle, and throughout Northern and Southern California.

Laddie is the recipient of two National Endowment grants; one for sculpture and one for painting, as well as a Guggenheim Fellowship for painting. He has also taught extensively at UCLA, UCIrvine, Art Centre in Pasadena, and lectured in numerous and art institutions across the United States.