Lois Dodd Exhibit, Hall Art Foundation, Vermont

The exhibbit of Lois Dodd's work juxtaposed that of Leon Golub, and seemed an inspired choice to me for the Hall Art Foundation to make. I loved everything about this. She is known for creating intimate and deceptively simple, yet acutely observational paintings, and this exhibit brought together approximately 50 works that span Dodd’s career from the late 1950s to paintings completed last year.

For decades, Dodd has painted views of her immediate, everyday surroundings at the places where she lives and works — the gardens and woods at her summer home in rural Mid-Coast Maine, landscapes around her weekend home in New Jersey near the Delaware Water Gap, and views from the window of her New York City loft on the Lower East Side. Preferring to work quickly, Dodd’s paintings are usually completed in one sitting, are based on direct observations of her surroundings, and when possible, en plein air. They are pleasing to look at and poeaceful in the way that views from your walks outside or from a cosy room can be. FFrom the exhibit: "Dodd’s everyday subjects frequently include architectural details of her home, tumbling down clapboard barns, clotheslines, trees and woods, detailed closeups of plants and flowers, nocturnal moonlight skies and precise views framed by windows. Dodd returns to familiar subjects repeatedly at different times of the year and works with urgency to capture a specific time of day. Carefully composed and distilled to their essential elements, her paintings possess an underlying geometry, and become studies of color, light, shadow, and form."