Lois Dodd
Natural Order, 1978, oil on linen, 50 x 38 inches
Lois Dodd: Natural Order
April 2, 2023 – May 28, 2023
Bruce Museum
1 Museum Drive
Greenwich, CT 06830-7157
For nearly eight decades, Lois Dodd (American, b. 1927) has produced a compelling body of work grounded in direct observation of her immediate surroundings. Working from her homes and studios on New York’s Lower East Side; Blairstown, New Jersey, near the Delaware Water Gap; and Midcoast Maine, Dodd continually draws inspiration from everyday life. Her subjects include verdant landscapes, detailed close-ups of flowers, nocturnal skies, dense woods, windows, clotheslines, weather-worn clapboard barns, and urban views entirely devoid of people. Painting en plein air, or outdoors, Dodd returns to familiar subjects repeatedly over the course of years or decades, working quickly to capture subtle changes in light, weather, and atmosphere at different seasons or times of day.
Born in Montclair, New Jersey, Dodd enrolled at The Cooper Union in the late 1940s, where she studied art and textile design. In 1952 she served as one of five founding members of the legendary Tanager Gallery, one of the first artist-run cooperative galleries in New York. Although she is often associated with the deadpan realism of her contemporaries Alex Katz, Fairfield Porter, and Neil Welliver, Dodd forged her own distinctive path during an era otherwise dominated by Abstract Expressionism, Pop Art, and Minimalism. Her direct yet unassuming pictures reflect an acutely observational approach to painting, often oscillating between representation and abstraction.
Featuring almost eighty paintings spanning nearly the entirety of her artistic production, from the mid-1950s to 2021, this exhibition is the largest survey of Dodd’s career to date. Taking its title from a work in the exhibition, Lois Dodd: Natural Order refers both to the artist’s enduring interest in nature and to the underlying geometry that structures her work. In compositions distilled to their very essence, Dodd offers a closely observed yet deeply personal view of the world that reflects the interiority of her artistic vision. “Painters are lucky that they see things—not everyone has this ability,” Dodd has said. “I can see things, and that’s where it starts.”
All text for this exhibition will be available in both English and Spanish. (Todo los textos de esta exposición estaran disponibles en Inglés y en Español).