Painting the Moon and Beyond: Lois Dodd and Friends Explore the Night Sky | Exhibition Catalog

PAINTING THE MOON AND BEYOND Lois Dodd and Friends Explore the Night Sky

November 19, 2021– April 29, 2022

Trenton City Museum at Ellarslie

PAINTING THE MOON AND BEYOND Lois Dodd and Friends Explore the Night Sky Ilene Dube, Curator

November 19, 2021– April 29, 2022 • Trenton City Museum at Ellarslie Ellarslie Mansion, Cadwalader Park Trenton, NJ www.ellarslie.org ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This exhibition is made possible thanks to: The Board of Trustees, Members, Donors, and Volunteers of the Trenton Museum Society, Joan Perkes, President City of Trenton, The Hon. Reed Gusciora, Mayor Robert Marc Liberman Jane Thomas Dr. and Mrs. Warren Trochinsky Jan Applebaum, Invitation Design Mercer County Cultural and Heritage Commission NJM Insurance Group The Bunbury Fund of the Princeton Area Community Foundation Rafael Novoa Interior Design Rago Lois Dodd’s paintings © Lois Dodd, Courtesy Alexandre Gallery, New York Programming is made possible, in part, by support from the Mercer County Cultural and Heritage Commission, in partnership with the New Jersey Historical Commission Division of Cultural Affairs/Department of State, the Bunbury Fund of the Princeton Area Community Foundation, the New Jersey Arts and Culture Recovery Fund, NJM Insurance Group, and individual donors.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any graphic, electronic, or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by means of any information storage without written permission of the publisher.

All artwork © by the respective artists We acknowledge our presence on the traditional territory of the Lenape tribes past, present, and future.

John Gummere, Catalog Design

“The more you look, the more you see.” – Lois Dodd It all began, for me, with Mel Leipzig’s painting of her.

Lois Dodd is pictured in her New York studio, Leipzig’s wide-angle perspective putting the pressed tin ceiling and white-painted floorboards in the foreground, while Dodd is seated in a corner, holding her hands clasped behind her head. And yet we get a sense of a woman who doesn’t spend much time seated: there’s a painting in progress on an easel, and a ladder just beneath a portion of the ceiling in need of repair. (In a recent conversation Dodd told me she’d had it fixed but that it needed to be repaired yet again.) Though taking up only a small portion of the canvas, Dodd’s presence is strong.

I wanted to get to know her work better, and I wanted to get to know this figure who’d played a significant role in the downtown gallery scene of 1950s New York and who, as a nonagenarian, continues to make paintings that have an impact around the world. Soon I learned that she was a catalyst for a group of artists who would go outside in the wee hours to paint, capturing the ethereal magic of Maine at night.

Communities of artists fascinate me. They provide a space where individuals can nurture, encourage, and support each other. Artists enjoy camaraderie with like-minded individuals who share advice on everything from politics to relationships.

Such communities of artists have been a part of Lois Dodd’s life since her early years at Cooper Union through the days at the Tanager Gallery she co-founded in New York in 1952, along with Charles Cajori, Bill King, Fred Mitchell, and Angelo Ippolito, and where she exhibited with Alex Katz, Philip Pearlstein, Tom Wesselmann, Yvonne Jacquette, and others.

Jeff Epstein, Dan Finaldi, and Elizabeth O’Reilly, whose works are on view along with Dodd’s in Painting the Moon and Beyond, are former students of Dodd who have embarked on painting expeditions together near Dodd’s homes in Blairstown, New Jersey, and Cushing, Maine. Together they have ventured out to uncover the mysteries of the night.

These artists share an affinity for subject matter, if not style, and feed off each other’s creativity. In addition to the nocturnes, Painting the Moon and Beyond looks through windows and doors, and at portraits the artists have made of each other, including the one by Leipzig.

It was Leipzig who introduced Epstein to Dodd, and Dodd who introduced Finaldi to Leipzig.

Painting the Moon and Beyond: Lois Dodd and Friends is accompanied by a short film and a catalog. The exhibition comes on the 25th anniversary of a retrospective of Dodd’s work at the Trenton City Museum.

— Ilene Dube, Curator

© Lois Dodd, Courtesy Alexandre Gallery

Rockland Night, Lois Dodd

Subaru with Hosta at Night, Jeff Epstein

Mel Under the Full Moon, Dan Finaldi

Night Shadows, Elizabeth O’Reilly

Lois Dodd Born in Montclair, New Jersey, in 1927, Dodd studied at Cooper Union from 1945-1948 and had her first solo exhibition in 1949 at the Pyramid Gallery in New York shortly before cofounding the cooperative-run Tanager Gallery, integral to the avant-garde scene of the 1950s.

A pioneering woman artist, her landscapes, cityscapes, portals, and portraits have been the subject of more than 50 solo exhibitions since 1954, a time when female artists didn’t receive the opportunity and recognition of their male counterparts. Her work is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the National Portrait Gallery, the Whitney Museum, and the Princeton University Art Museum, as well as Bowdoin College Museum of Art, the Colby College Museum of Art, the Farnsworth Art Museum, and the Portland Art Museum, among others.

When settling in Maine for the summers more than half a century ago, she became interested in painting windows she would see in her own yard, or in the yards of abandoned houses; what she could see through them, and what they reflected. Her landscapes and interiors connect the inside of a room with the world outside. © Lois Dodd, Courtesy Alexandre Gallery

Thomaston Night, Lois Dodd

Dodd is represented by the Alexandre Gallery in New York.

Jeff Epstein Born in Trenton, New Jersey, in 1954, Epstein earned his MFA from Brooklyn College in 1993, where he studied with Lois Dodd. This is his fourth exhibition at Ellarslie. A Brooklyn resident, he has summered in Maine for nearly three decades, where he frequently paints with Dodd. His subject matter is found where the natural and man-made worlds overlap. There are indications of human presence yet no actual figures are included. There exists a nuanced space where moments of natural beauty are interrupted by man-made intrusions.

Epstein has shown in exhibitions at the National Academy of Design in New York, U.S.S.R. Artists Union Gallery in Moscow, the Center for Maine Contemporary Art, the Newark Museum, the Noyes Museum of Art, and Rider University, among others. He is represented by Caldbeck Gallery in Rockland, Maine.

“Visiting Lois in Maine for the first time was a revelation. I met her friends and long-time painting companions John Wissemann and Nancy Wissemann-Widrig. On painting nights they would pull up in the minivan, load our gear and off we’d go; John at the wheel, Nancy beside him and Lois and me in the back with any other visiting painters. We would arrive at the location with enough time to get set up and decide on our motifs before it was totally dark. In addition to the benefits of bug spray and a small flashlight, Lois taught me when to stop working on a painting and that making a date to paint with others will ensure that you will actually do it.”

Night Ladders, Jeff Epstein

Dan Finaldi As a child of Italian immigrants, Dan Finaldi drew obsessively. When he was 18, the Rochester, New York, native made a decision to commit to the visual arts. It was in the face of Abstract Expressionism that he found his subject matter: the figure. He earned a BFA from SUNY New Paltz and an MFA from Brooklyn College, where he found mentors Lois Dodd, Lennart Anderson, and Phillip Pearlstein. Lois Dodd introduced him to nationally renowned Trenton-based artist Mel Leipzig who also became a mentor. As an artist, Finaldi took various jobs to support his family, but both Dodd and Leipzig encouraged him to teach and helped lead him on the path toward his teaching career.

He is a recipient of a Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation Fellowship, and his artwork has been in numerous regional and national juried exhibitions. He has taught at Freehold High School for two decades, where his students are frequent subjects. Finaldi is grateful to family, artist friends, and students who offer continued insight, guidance, and inspiration, and to Dodd for clarity and friendship.

Lois Painting, Dan Finaldi

“Lois gave us encouragement and stability, which is so important to an artist. The reason so many are devoted to her is because she’s been dedicated to our well-being. She helped us to get established. She even encouraged me to get married and lead a normal life. Teachers don’t typically do that. She’s a friend, a relative; she goes way beyond. Had it not been for Lois, many of us wouldn’t be where they are today.

You need to be a stable human being in order to create.”

Elizabeth O’Reilly Elizabeth O’Reilly has been compelled to draw since her childhood in an orphanage, beginning at age 3, in Ireland. Painting and drawing were the things she could get attention for. To earn a living she became a teacher and moved to Brooklyn, New York, in the 1980s. Taking classes at the Art Students League on weekends, she met Lois Dodd while applying to the MFA program at Brooklyn College. Soon she found herself co-teaching with Dodd and spending weekends painting with her. Since then she has been in exhibitions with Dodd and the two have traveled together internationally, sharing tastes in politics, literature, and food.

O’Reilly says she learned more from Dodd after grad school, just seeing how she lives her life and how she fits painting into her day.

O’Reilly’s numerous solo exhibitions have been at the National Arts Club and George Billis Gallery in New York, among others, and in Ireland. She is the recipient of many awards including a Pollock Krasner Foundation grant.

“Lois is open, kind, and helpful; she always said the secret is to have young friends.

That’s where her students came in. The first summer after graduating Lois invited me to Cushing, and I’ve never missed a summer. There’s no slacking around Lois. After breakfast she will say, ‘What are you going to paint?’ During the pandemic summer of 2020 I spent three months with Lois and her family in Cushing. We painted our hearts out. Lois has a very big heart.”

Worm Hole, Elizabeth O’Reilly

Lois Dodd, Mel Leipzig

“I also liked the pose that Lois chose, with her hands up behind her head. It was a visually exciting and unusual pose.

For me it expresses her independent spirit which I so much admire.” ­

— Mel Leipzig, Lois Dodd: Catching the Light, Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art

On front cover: Night Sky © Lois Dodd, Courtesy Alexandre Gallery