Author Description

Over the past 50 years, American painter Lois Dodd (born 1927) has been recording the quieter moments of everyday life on New York’s Lower East Side and in mid-coast Maine, infusing the modernist tradition of plein air painting with Shaker-like qualities of modesty, airiness and quiet elegance. Views from city windows, gentle scenes of washing lines in back gardens, the artist’s shadow on a summer lawn with her painting tools at the far edge of the image: these objects of the painter’s attention declare themselves while leaving room to breathe for both viewer and artist. Published on the occasion of the artist’s first museum retrospective at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City (which travels to Portland Museum of Art in Maine), Catching the Light offers the first comprehensive overview of Dodd’s art in full-color reproductions, photographic documentation and essays.