Part of the UMVA’s Maine Masters film series will be screened free via Zoom on 11 April at 6:30 p.m., followed by a discussion with painter Lois Dodd, curator Suzette McAvoy, art critic Karen Wilkin, and filmmaker Richard Kane. Email kanelewisproductions@gmail.com to request a Zoom link. If you can’t attend but want to see the film, it is available here.
Dodd was born in Montclair, New Jersey and will celebrate her 97th birthday in April. She graduated from New York’s Cooper Union and helped found the legendary Tanager Gallery where Willem de Kooning, Philip Guston, and others got started. She later taught art at Brooklyn College for over twenty years. She visited Maine in 1951 with Alex Katz and others at the Skowhegan School and moved to Cushing in 1961. Later she was involved with the Artfellows Cooperative Gallery that played a major role in the “Belfast Renaissance.”
Lois Dodd, View Through Elliot’s Shack Looking South.
Dodd’s paintings blend abstraction and representation of everyday subjects and create “a sense of grandeur and simplicity that is the essence of the Maine experience,” according to Curator Susan Larson. Lois Dodd: Maine Master includes a rich and varied sampling of these paintings, accompanied by the artist’s personal take on art and life.
Image at top: Lois Dodd: Maine Master (photo: Kane-Lewis Productions).