Lois Dodd ‘New Panel Paintings’ Alexandre Gallery

Small scale paintings and intimacies are finely offered in Lois Dodd’s exhibition at Alexandre Gallery. A veteran New York Painter for over sixty years, Dodd’s paintings do not betray any signs of weariness. Instead, Dodd renders scenes of everyday summer life in Maine with buoyancy and finesse. Close-ups of plants, flower bulbs, flying bees, views through windows and lawnscapes provide Dodd’s circumscribed pictorial world. Midsummer colors—dioxidines, lemons and creams—fleck each surface. Dodd’s paint handling is unfastened to literal detail; each glutinous brushmark is all thumbs, yet congeals inside the viewer’s mind. Dodd, a co-founder of the Tananger Gallery, has deeply internalized Matisse’s painting entitled Periwinkles/Moroccan Garden from 1912 in the Museum of Modern Art. Dodd has taken to heart Cezanne’s ambition to make a Poussin after nature, except instead has made Matisse her lodestar. Dodd, born the same year as Alex Katz, is serious without being self-serious. Her work’s sole demand is perception honestly undertaken.

Lois Dodd
Echinacea, 2011
oil on masonite
18 1/8 x 15 3/4 inches

 

Lois Dodd
Barn Window - Blue Sky, 2011
oil on masonite
15 3/4 x 13 1/8 inches

Lois Dodd
January Window, 2011
oil on masonite
22 x 14 inches

Lois Dodd
Pink Geranium + Window Lock + Ochre Tree, 2011
oil on masonite
15 3/4 x 10 inches

Lois Dodd
Dooryard View, 2010
oil on masonite
16 x 20 inches

Lois Dodd
White Flower, Queen Anne's Lace, 2010
oil on masonite
16 x 19 3/8 inches