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As Lois Dodd prepares for a retrospective next year at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art in Rockport, she is making a list of all the different subjects she has painted: nudes, night, cows, windows, reflections, flowers, woods, landscapes, interiors, portraits, winter, laundry, spiderwebs, eclipses, quarries, buildings, and ruins. Any one of them could comprise an entire exhibit. Her body of work is huge; her impact on the landscape of art, enormous; her ego, fairly nonexistent. She is humble and reflective, funny, generous, and a great painter.
By the age of 14, both of Dodd’s parents had died. She was the youngest of four sisters, raising themselves in a time of World War II rations and blackout curtains in Montclair, New Jersey. To her, it seemed normal. It was the life she knew, and that is how she approached the living of life and the creating of work for the next 66 years: present and straightforward, open to what the universe has in store for her.
She came to a career in painting by way of Cooper Union in New York City, and to Maine by way of some friends who attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. In the 1950s, she was instrumental in forming the legendary Tanager Gallery in New York City. Tanager was the springboard for artists whose work has ended up all over the world, and in collections in places like the National Academy Museum, the Whitney Museum of Art, the Guggenheim.
Dodd bonds to the landscapes she inhabits. She maintains homes in New Jersey and New York City, as well as Maine. At any point in the year, she will be found where the climate is most conducive to painting outside. Her home in Cushing is stunning, but not in that oh-my-god how-big or how-appointed or how-precious way. A painted landscape sweeps across one bedroom wall and onto another. There are wide painted floorboards, a steep, narrow staircase, an old woodstove. Books and paintings and stones abound. The barn that hugs the road is her studio. Five acres slope down to 10 feet of deep waterfront along the St. George River.
Not a coastal landscape painter, she much prefers to paint the few stray cows wandering in a stubbly field, the windows, broken or not, that frame and reflect her vision. Dodd does not seek “prettiness”; there must be an edginess that attracts her to that flower, that window, that laundry whipping itself on the line.
Praised in a New York Times review for work “blessedly free of academic stuffiness,” one need only see the work to know what that means. It’s sensuous, airy, deep, playful, simple, masterful.
Did you always know you would be a painter?
Oh, no. I assumed I would be a secretary, like everybody else. That I’d get an office job and work somewhere. And then a graduate student came to our high school [in Montclair, New Jersey] to student teach. She told us about Parsons, Pratt, Cooper, all these places that were in New York. They were only 15 miles away, but we knew nothing about them. Then she got to the part about Cooper Union being free. So one of the other girls and I decided we’d take the test. We did and got in. [Established in 1859, Cooper Union has always been free.]
Cooper Union accepts a very small percentage of applicants. You must have been very good.
I don’t know about that. This was at the end of World War II, and so who knows, that might have improved my chances. Within a year, all of the GIs came back who had been enrolled at the school. It was such a competitive time to be there. It was fantastic.
What did you study?
Well, remember, I was practical. I figured I could support myself with textile design, but by the time I went out banging on the doors of all the textile houses, it seemed all they were interested in were little sets of rosebuds on black something or other. I didn’t know how to design like that. So much for practical.
And so you became a painter.
Right. I was painting more and more, and my friends were painters. And so I just sort of backed into it.
Your use of color seems to have a serious playfulness to it, or maybe it’s a playful seriousness.
All I know about color is that every artist has a different palette. It’s very interesting about how intuitive and personal color is, the things you put on your palette, the things that you mix together. I mean, there are other palettes that I could no more use . . . I wouldn’t want those colors. I couldn’t have it. It’s so visceral, more than any of the other qualities of painting.
How would you describe your palette?
Totally unarranged. Chaotic. I just squeeze colors out as I need them and they’re all over the map, never in the same place.
For decades now, you’ve painted outside most of the time. How would you explain to a non-painter what that’s like, why you do that?
Well, if I’m inside painting, I get much slower and I have to think about every stroke and it becomes a major chore. But if I’m outside, I’m limited by the weather, the time of day, the sun is moving, the shadows are shifting. I might be cold in wintertime. I might start to freeze. It makes me very alert, very awake, and the decisions I make because I have to make them are usually better than the decisions I make when I have all day. It’s the pressure of the life out there, of the day passing.
Does really knowing a place change how you paint it?
Knowing definitely does get into the paint. And nothing is static. Nothing. It’s always changing.
When you return to a place, the place is different, but you’re different, too.
That’s it exactly. The lens is different. The mood is different—of the painter, of the place, of the society—the madness we’re in now, who knows how that’s getting in.
You live in a coastal area, but your landscapes could be in Patten.
Well, it’s hard to really “see” coastal when there are so many paintings of the coast. When we first came to Maine, Alex [Katz] and Bill [King], all of us, we were afraid to move to the coast because we thought we’d all paint paintings of lobster pots. We were terrified. Finally we had enough confidence in ourselves, and we found the place in Lincolnville—that’s where Alex still lives in the little yellow farmhouse. [The group of artists shared the summer home for many years.]
How did your nude figures end up stacking wood and hanging clothes?
Well, the model was doing those things. A group of us have been coming together to sketch the same model once a week for 20 years. We have to wait until July, though, when the blackflies are gone. At her place there’s a garden, there’s a woodpile, there’s a laundry line, so we’d say, Gee, why not do a little with the laundry line?
You must have a lot of those sketches.
Right. I guess so. Maybe thousands. But I never did anything with them, just piled them up, until five years ago. We had a summer that was so miserably hot that it was better to be in the barn [Dodd’s art studio] than to be out somewhere. And I was standing around bored in the barn with nothing to do. So I started painting from those drawings.
Are you always looking for a subject?
I think most artists are more aware of the visual world than other people so you just literally see more stuff. But who knows why you’re attracted to a certain thing, why you make the choices you make. If I knew why I was painting this or that, if I knew what it was going to look like, I almost wouldn’t have to do it. It’s kind of a searching out of things while you’re painting that makes the thing exciting.
By the age of 14, both of Dodd’s parents had died. She was the youngest of four sisters, raising themselves in a time of World War II rations and blackout curtains in Montclair, New Jersey. To her, it seemed normal. It was the life she knew, and that is how she approached the living of life and the creating of work for the next 66 years: present and straightforward, open to what the universe has in store for her.
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She came to a career in painting by way of Cooper Union in New York City, and to Maine by way of some friends who attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. In the 1950s, she was instrumental in forming the legendary Tanager Gallery in New York City. Tanager was the springboard for artists whose work has ended up all over the world, and in collections in places like the National Academy Museum, the Whitney Museum of Art, the Guggenheim.
Dodd bonds to the landscapes she inhabits. She maintains homes in New Jersey and New York City, as well as Maine. At any point in the year, she will be found where the climate is most conducive to painting outside. Her home in Cushing is stunning, but not in that oh-my-god how-big or how-appointed or how-precious way. A painted landscape sweeps across one bedroom wall and onto another. There are wide painted floorboards, a steep, narrow staircase, an old woodstove. Books and paintings and stones abound. The barn that hugs the road is her studio. Five acres slope down to 10 feet of deep waterfront along the St. George River.
Not a coastal landscape painter, she much prefers to paint the few stray cows wandering in a stubbly field, the windows, broken or not, that frame and reflect her vision. Dodd does not seek “prettiness”; there must be an edginess that attracts her to that flower, that window, that laundry whipping itself on the line.
Praised in a New York Times review for work “blessedly free of academic stuffiness,” one need only see the work to know what that means. It’s sensuous, airy, deep, playful, simple, masterful.
Did you always know you would be a painter?
Oh, no. I assumed I would be a secretary, like everybody else. That I’d get an office job and work somewhere. And then a graduate student came to our high school [in Montclair, New Jersey] to student teach. She told us about Parsons, Pratt, Cooper, all these places that were in New York. They were only 15 miles away, but we knew nothing about them. Then she got to the part about Cooper Union being free. So one of the other girls and I decided we’d take the test. We did and got in. [Established in 1859, Cooper Union has always been free.]
Cooper Union accepts a very small percentage of applicants. You must have been very good.
I don’t know about that. This was at the end of World War II, and so who knows, that might have improved my chances. Within a year, all of the GIs came back who had been enrolled at the school. It was such a competitive time to be there. It was fantastic.
What did you study?
Well, remember, I was practical. I figured I could support myself with textile design, but by the time I went out banging on the doors of all the textile houses, it seemed all they were interested in were little sets of rosebuds on black something or other. I didn’t know how to design like that. So much for practical.
And so you became a painter.
Right. I was painting more and more, and my friends were painters. And so I just sort of backed into it.
Your use of color seems to have a serious playfulness to it, or maybe it’s a playful seriousness.
All I know about color is that every artist has a different palette. It’s very interesting about how intuitive and personal color is, the things you put on your palette, the things that you mix together. I mean, there are other palettes that I could no more use . . . I wouldn’t want those colors. I couldn’t have it. It’s so visceral, more than any of the other qualities of painting.
How would you describe your palette?
Totally unarranged. Chaotic. I just squeeze colors out as I need them and they’re all over the map, never in the same place.
For decades now, you’ve painted outside most of the time. How would you explain to a non-painter what that’s like, why you do that?
Well, if I’m inside painting, I get much slower and I have to think about every stroke and it becomes a major chore. But if I’m outside, I’m limited by the weather, the time of day, the sun is moving, the shadows are shifting. I might be cold in wintertime. I might start to freeze. It makes me very alert, very awake, and the decisions I make because I have to make them are usually better than the decisions I make when I have all day. It’s the pressure of the life out there, of the day passing.
Does really knowing a place change how you paint it?
Knowing definitely does get into the paint. And nothing is static. Nothing. It’s always changing.
When you return to a place, the place is different, but you’re different, too.
That’s it exactly. The lens is different. The mood is different—of the painter, of the place, of the society—the madness we’re in now, who knows how that’s getting in.
You live in a coastal area, but your landscapes could be in Patten.
Well, it’s hard to really “see” coastal when there are so many paintings of the coast. When we first came to Maine, Alex [Katz] and Bill [King], all of us, we were afraid to move to the coast because we thought we’d all paint paintings of lobster pots. We were terrified. Finally we had enough confidence in ourselves, and we found the place in Lincolnville—that’s where Alex still lives in the little yellow farmhouse. [The group of artists shared the summer home for many years.]
How did your nude figures end up stacking wood and hanging clothes?
Well, the model was doing those things. A group of us have been coming together to sketch the same model once a week for 20 years. We have to wait until July, though, when the blackflies are gone. At her place there’s a garden, there’s a woodpile, there’s a laundry line, so we’d say, Gee, why not do a little with the laundry line?
You must have a lot of those sketches.
Right. I guess so. Maybe thousands. But I never did anything with them, just piled them up, until five years ago. We had a summer that was so miserably hot that it was better to be in the barn [Dodd’s art studio] than to be out somewhere. And I was standing around bored in the barn with nothing to do. So I started painting from those drawings.
Are you always looking for a subject?
I think most artists are more aware of the visual world than other people so you just literally see more stuff. But who knows why you’re attracted to a certain thing, why you make the choices you make. If I knew why I was painting this or that, if I knew what it was going to look like, I almost wouldn’t have to do it. It’s kind of a searching out of things while you’re painting that makes the thing exciting.
