LOIS DODD New Panel Paintings

Lois Dodd’s great gift as a painter is her ability to pose complex questions without seeming to try. In this exhibition of small oil on board works, she paints the familiar surroundings of her home in Maine, depicting ordinary things like snow on a windowpane, laundry on the clothesline, or a puff of Queen Anne’s lace. She focuses intently on the visual, simplifying form, interpreting color, and organizing space. Dodd is an unselfconscious version of On Kawara, the artist who has famously been painting dates for over 40 years, centering white sans-serif characters on a monochromatic dark background. Both artists have structured their lives around painting, and both mark the passage of time through their work, but Dodd doesn’t have (or need) a precious conceptual hook. She looks squarely at her surroundings and paints what she sees, chronicling the seasons, the fleeting effects of light, the changes in plants and landscape. Through seemingly casual brushwork and unerring color choices, Dodd conveys the emotional timbre of daily life. What makes Dodd’s paintings so remarkable is the psychic punch they deliver in picturing the ostensibly unremarkable.