Hopkins Wharf Gallery presents: Lois Dodd: “No one else can really help you ...”Paintings & Ephemera

LOIS DODD paints with oil on Masonite, aluminum flashing, and on wooden panels.
She chronicles scenes of the everyday, revealing the beauty of shadow and line with efficiency and a candid aptitude to reintroduce scenes familiar but often overlooked. For Dodd, the everyday is not merely an accessible subject but one captivating, fascinating, and worthy of study. On view in the Hopkins Wharf Gallery from July 23 to August 5, 2023, the exhibition celebrates the work of the 96-year-old artist. The 13 pieces highlight Dodd’s appreciation for landscapes and moments of unassuming importance around her — many of which were painted from her home in Cushing, Maine, where the artist spends the warmer months.

In a review for the Wall Street Journal, critic William Spiegelman writes, “Ms. Dodd remains singularly herself throughout a long life of artistic experimentation.”

Through subject, style, and technique, “Ms. Dodd’s best work combines order and disorder with complex charm.”

Born in New Jersey in 1927, Dodd studied at the Cooper Union before becoming a founding member of the Tanager, the Greenwich Village gallery located in the epicenter of Abstract Expressionism. The gallery was formed, in part, to display the artist’s work among friends and contemporaries like Charles Cajori and Angelo Ippolito. Taking respite from the city alongside friend and artist Alex Katz, Dodd found inspiration alongside the coast of Maine. The dynamic climate, modest New England architecture, and lush views from her bedroom window provided much content for her work. Dodd co-owned a house in Lincolnville with Katz and artist Jean Cohen for a decade before purchasing her own property in Cushing. During this time, Dodd transformed her usual artistic method, now working outdoors and foregoing her previous habit of painting from drawings.

While the artist’s work is often joyous and colorful, her scenes remain rooted in an alluring representativeness. Dodd seems to find little reason to deviate far from what she sees in front of her — the mundane is worth capturing not in spite of its simplicity but because of it. The foundation of Dodd’s work is found in what she refers to as “American ruins” — weathered farmhouses, barns, and shingled outhouses. The artist’s appreciation for the natural world and fascination with the framing of windows, as well as the ever-changing view from her bedroom, run through much of her oeuvre.