LOIS DODD is an influential American painter, with work included in major corporate collections, museums in the U.S. and abroad and in numerous prestigious solo and group shows. Mario Naves wrote…
Lois Dodd has lived in a loft-studio on Second Street near the Bowery for over fifty years. When visiting her, one is struck by the independence of her lifestyle, as well as her work.
The 90-year-old painter is the subject of a new book and exhibition in New York.
She finds great company in aloneness. A strip of light beneath a closed door; colors flapping from a clothesline; gray raindrops squiggling down a city window; a snowy, headlit hill;…
Yes, landscapes are different every day, and at night. There are always events — some natural and some manmade — that take place. In “Self-Portrait in Green Window” (1971), I was interested …
I wish to thank both Lois Dodd for agreeing to the phone conversation and for her time and thoughtfulness with answering my questions and to share her experience and ideas with our readers. I would also like to thank Elizabeth O’Reilly for the many ways she helped make this possible. Larry Groff: Do you spend a lot of time looking and thinking about the subject before you start to paint? Lois Dodd: It's more about what I see when I'm walking around looking for something. Then after that it a matter of what size I want to work with and the proportion it will fit into. Then I try to isolate something that would make a good painting, a good subject. I look through my pile of gessoed panels that are different sizes and different proportions. They are all rectangles or squares and I always take a few of those when I go out so I have a variety of panels to choose from because that is the first decision. If you're looking at something you want to paint and it looks exciting, the lighting is good and then you have to decide what size what shape of a panel will it fit onto; you ask yourself, is it a horizontal thing or vertical or square. Those are the first choices. LG: How do you start a painting? Do you make studies or thumbnails first? Do you use a viewfinder of some sort? LOIS DODD: I don't really use a viewfinder but I can put my hands up to frame the view or something like that. I don't make thumbnail sketches, I'm more interested in starting right on the panel. I start with thinned out yellow paint and draw with the brush. So it's pretty minimal, general and not tight. You asked me if I scrape off, I don't use a scraper but I don't use heavy paint either I really paint rather thinly so we never get to the point where I can scrape. But if I don't like what I've done I can rub it off with a rag with turpentine and rub it all around and then I have a nice colored ground to work into that I can use.
In recent weeks, I have written about what I have defined as a grown-up painter, as opposed to what I called “the latest manifestation of a male adolescent painter, a clichéd archetype that gained traction in the Neo-Expressionist ‘80s, with the rise of Julian Schnabel, and has not been thrown over because lots of people still find this sort of chest thumping entertaining.”
I wish to thank both Lois Dodd for agreeing to the phone conversation and for her time and thoughtfulness with answering my questions and to share her experience and ideas with our readers. I would also like to thank Elizabeth O’Reilly for the many ways she helped make this possible. Larry Groff: Do you spend a lot of time looking and thinking about the subject before you start to paint? Lois Dodd: It's more about what I see when I'm walking around looking for something. Then after that it a matter of what size I want to work with and the proportion it will fit into. Then I try to isolate something that would make a good painting, a good subject. I look through my pile of gessoed panels that are different sizes and different proportions. They are all rectangles or squares and I always take a few of those when I go out so I have a variety of panels to choose from because that is the first decision. If you're looking at something you want to paint and it looks exciting, the lighting is good and then you have to decide what size what shape of a panel will it fit onto; you ask yourself, is it a horizontal thing or vertical or square. Those are the first choices. LG: How do you start a painting? Do you make studies or thumbnails first? Do you use a viewfinder of some sort? LOIS DODD: I don't really use a viewfinder but I can put my hands up to frame the view or something like that. I don't make thumbnail sketches, I'm more interested in starting right on the panel. I start with thinned out yellow paint and draw with the brush. So it's pretty minimal, general and not tight. You asked me if I scrape off, I don't use a scraper but I don't use heavy paint either I really paint rather thinly so we never get to the point where I can scrape. But if I don't like what I've done I can rub it off with a rag with turpentine and rub it all around and then I have a nice colored ground to work into that I can use.
LOIS DODD is an influential American painter, with work included in major corporate collections, museums in the U.S. and abroad and in numerous prestigious solo and group shows. Mario Naves wrote…
Lois Dodd has lived in a loft-studio on Second Street near the Bowery for over fifty years. When visiting her, one is struck by the independence of her lifestyle, as well as her work.
Lois Dodd! Who can’t find her work utterly amazing. Lois is an icon. She creates the most fantastic paintings. Here are a few that I find so striking! There is a wonderful link to a video int…
Most people use five-by-seven-inch sheets of aluminum as a refuge against the outdoors—they help keep a roof watertight. Not Lois Dodd, who, at ninety-two, still carries them into the landscape of Maine to paint en plein air, as she has for decades, part poet and part reporter. Flashing, the material’s name, also tidily summarizes her process: Dodd paints quickly with oils, wet into wet, finishing each little gem in one session. Eighty-five of these pictures line the walls of the Alexandre gallery, in midtown (through Feb. 9). The time of day and the scale both shift, as Dodd zooms out to float a dime-size amber moon in an inky night sky or zooms in to discover a yellow sunflower petal in a shady patch of green grass. Bodies appear, most endearingly as a series of fleshy female nudes. The show is an antidote to ostentation, until Dodd introduces a handful of non-plein-air Trumps, a jarring reminder that there’s now no respite from politics in American life.
In recent weeks, I have written about what I have defined as a grown-up painter, as opposed to what I called “the latest manifestation of a male adolescent painter, a clichéd archetype that gained traction in the Neo-Expressionist ‘80s, with the rise of Julian Schnabel, and has not been thrown over because lots of people still find this sort of chest thumping entertaining.”
The 90-year-old painter is the subject of a new book and exhibition in New York.
LOIS DODD is an influential American painter, with work included in major corporate collections, museums in the U.S. and abroad and in numerous prestigious solo and group shows. Mario Naves wrote…
I wish to thank both Lois Dodd for agreeing to the phone conversation and for her time and thoughtfulness with answering my questions and to share her experience and ideas with our readers. I would also like to thank Elizabeth O’Reilly for the many ways she helped make this possible. Larry Groff: Do you spend a lot of time looking and thinking about the subject before you start to paint? Lois Dodd: It's more about what I see when I'm walking around looking for something. Then after that it a matter of what size I want to work with and the proportion it will fit into. Then I try to isolate something that would make a good painting, a good subject. I look through my pile of gessoed panels that are different sizes and different proportions. They are all rectangles or squares and I always take a few of those when I go out so I have a variety of panels to choose from because that is the first decision. If you're looking at something you want to paint and it looks exciting, the lighting is good and then you have to decide what size what shape of a panel will it fit onto; you ask yourself, is it a horizontal thing or vertical or square. Those are the first choices. LG: How do you start a painting? Do you make studies or thumbnails first? Do you use a viewfinder of some sort? LOIS DODD: I don't really use a viewfinder but I can put my hands up to frame the view or something like that. I don't make thumbnail sketches, I'm more interested in starting right on the panel. I start with thinned out yellow paint and draw with the brush. So it's pretty minimal, general and not tight. You asked me if I scrape off, I don't use a scraper but I don't use heavy paint either I really paint rather thinly so we never get to the point where I can scrape. But if I don't like what I've done I can rub it off with a rag with turpentine and rub it all around and then I have a nice colored ground to work into that I can use.
Lois Dodd has lived in a loft-studio on Second Street near the Bowery for over fifty years. When visiting her, one is struck by the independence of her lifestyle, as well as her work.
The 90-year-old painter is the subject of a new book and exhibition in New York.
LOIS DODD is an influential American painter, with work included in major corporate collections, museums in the U.S. and abroad and in numerous prestigious solo and group shows. Mario Naves wrote…
Verticality and Balance Against the Pull of Gravity: a few words from Lois Dodd At 90, and a week after the opening of her thirteenth exhibit at the Alexander Gallery in New York, and the launch of a monograph of her work, Lois Dodd offered the following brief but direct response to my single […]
Lois Dodd has lived in a loft-studio on Second Street near the Bowery for over fifty years. When visiting her, one is struck by the independence of her lifestyle, as well as her work.
LOIS DODD is an influential American painter, with work included in major corporate collections, museums in the U.S. and abroad and in numerous prestigious solo and group shows. Mario Naves wrote…
In recent weeks, I have written about what I have defined as a grown-up painter, as opposed to what I called “the latest manifestation of a male adolescent painter, a clichéd archetype that gained traction in the Neo-Expressionist ‘80s, with the rise of Julian Schnabel, and has not been thrown over because lots of people still find this sort of chest thumping entertaining.”
LOIS DODD is an influential American painter, with work included in major corporate collections, museums in the U.S. and abroad and in numerous prestigious solo and group shows. Mario Naves wrote…
