Lucy Dodd

Lucy Dodd (born 1981, New York) is an American painter and installation artist. Dodd synthesizes pigments from various organic and inorganic matter. Her work frequently invokes art historical and mythological symbolism. Dodd has been critically compared to mid-century artists Cy Twombly, Sigmar Polke, Robert Ryman, and Willem de Kooning.

Early life and education Dodd studied at the Art Center College of Design, California (BFA, 2004) and Bard College, New York (MFA, 2011). She lives and works in Kingston, New York.

Work Dodd stages exhibitions with a dramaturgical approach, and considers her paintings "characters." In a 2018 interview with artist Rashid Johnson, Dodd said: "I think about painting in a theatrical way. [...] The paintings are actually characters that people have to interact with." Dodd prefers her paintings be displayed in the round "as an object," rather than flush against a wall. Her debut New York solo exhibition at the project space No5A in 2013, The Studio Before 54, consisted of three large-scale paintings produced from the rubbings of various dry minerals, including graphite and iron glimmer. Listed materials also included "the souls of the shoes of Nanette Lepore, Margiela, Clergerie, a half calf cowboy boot, a no name mule, a foot with foss mud." Her selections imply that a taste for aesthetics in the visual arts could be linked to other senses. Dodd understands each painting as "an organic entity" and embraces its chemical "possibility of transformation." In his review of her 2013 solo show Cake 4 Catfish at David Lewis Gallery, Jerry Saltz described Dodd's "topographic" paintings as "two-dimensional animals with inbuilt chemistries, going through secret artistic caramelizations and painterly photosynthesis, converting liquids and semisolids into bliss."

Symbolism In her practice Dodd explores "the exhibition as a ritualized space -- in which paintings conceived as characters, mythical and poetic fragments, or totems, are activated and transformed over a period of time." Her work and its viewers are "cast" as "protagonists in a highly complex theatre of signifiers." The durational project, titled Guernika, culminated three years of her research on the history and mythology of Guernica and Picasso. A corresponding book, The Genesis of a Painting, was released.

Exhibitions Dodd has been exhibited at The Power Station, Dallas; Rubell Family Collection, Miami; David Lewis, New York; Sprüth Magers, Berlin; Mendes Wood DM, São Paulo; and Blum & Poe, Los Angeles; The Rachofsky Collection, The Warehouse, Dallas; Skarstedt, New York; Altman Siegel, San Francisco; Campoli Presti, Paris; Galleria Alfonso Artiaco, Naples; Kaufmann Repetto, Milan; Armada, Milan; Meyer Kainer, Vienna; ProChoice, Vienna; Front Desk Apparatus, New York; White Columns, New York; The Kitchen, New York, and Performa 11.

Collections Dodd's work is included in the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN; Aïshti Foundation, Beirut; Sammlung Goetz, Münich, Germany; The Rubell Family Collection, Miami, FL.