Opening Reception Friday, May 4, 2018 - 6:00 - 8:00 pm
Show runs May 1-31st, 2018
Artist Statement
LEO DODD (1927-2015)
Leo Dodd was an avid painter, photographer, birder, naturalist, history buff, and community advocate. But sketching was his overriding passion. He drew cartoons for his Villanova college newspaper. As a mechanical/design engineer at Kodak he was called upon to show ideas in technical sketches. He liked to say, “I can’t talk without a pencil.”
Leo took an early retirement offer and began sketching local scenes. He loved downtown and was especially drawn to construction sites as Rochester remade itself. He found one such project close to his Corwin Road home, the reworking of the Can of Worms in 1988. He went there almost daily to draw and paint and was quoted in an article in the Democrat & Chronicle as saying, “At the Can it is changing every minute and the fun is just that - unposed activity with something changing all the time. I like to sketch equipment. I guess it's the engineer in me.”
The 2017 Rochester Biennial at Rochester Contemporary Arts Center featured Leo Dodd’s Rochester paintings – the construction of the O’Rorke Memorial Bridge, the Frederick Douglass Susan B. Anthony Bridge, the Bausch & Lomb corporate headquarters building, Red Wing Stadium and the Sculpture Park at the Memorial Art Gallery.
But Leo painted everywhere he went. He sketched and painted birds, flowers, barns, landscapes, lighthouses, Cape Cod, Maine and much more. All can be seen in this show.
Leo took watercolor workshops with world renowned watercolorists Milford Zornes, Dong Kingman, Robert Wood and Mario Cooper. He painted in Fred Lipp’s Creative Workshop class for twenty years.
Rick Muto, the director of Axom Gallery writes, “Upon seeing Leo’s body of work one easily identifies him with the Regionalist movement of the early 20th century, artists like Thomas Hart Benton, one of the most respected leaders of the movement, and Carl Peters, a local landscape and mural artist, who taught at the UR’s Memorial Art Gallery. Dodd’s stylistic handling of his subjects is most evident in his emphasis on gesture, gravity and movement rather than exact proportion, perspective and detail. This allowed him the freedom to express the underlying mood or energy of the subject. Like Benton, Dodd’s work almost always included human activity.”
LEO DODD (1927-2015)
Leo Dodd was an avid painter, photographer, birder, naturalist, history buff, and community advocate. But sketching was his overriding passion. He drew cartoons for his Villanova college newspaper. As a mechanical/design engineer at Kodak he was called upon to show ideas in technical sketches. He liked to say, “I can’t talk without a pencil.”
Leo took an early retirement offer and began sketching local scenes. He loved downtown and was especially drawn to construction sites as Rochester remade itself. He found one such project close to his Corwin Road home, the reworking of the Can of Worms in 1988. He went there almost daily to draw and paint and was quoted in an article in the Democrat & Chronicle as saying, “At the Can it is changing every minute and the fun is just that - unposed activity with something changing all the time. I like to sketch equipment. I guess it's the engineer in me.”
The 2017 Rochester Biennial at Rochester Contemporary Arts Center featured Leo Dodd’s Rochester paintings – the construction of the O’Rorke Memorial Bridge, the Frederick Douglass Susan B. Anthony Bridge, the Bausch & Lomb corporate headquarters building, Red Wing Stadium and the Sculpture Park at the Memorial Art Gallery.
But Leo painted everywhere he went. He sketched and painted birds, flowers, barns, landscapes, lighthouses, Cape Cod, Maine and much more. All can be seen in this show.
Leo took watercolor workshops with world renowned watercolorists Milford Zornes, Dong Kingman, Robert Wood and Mario Cooper. He painted in Fred Lipp’s Creative Workshop class for twenty years.
Rick Muto, the director of Axom Gallery writes, “Upon seeing Leo’s body of work one easily identifies him with the Regionalist movement of the early 20th century, artists like Thomas Hart Benton, one of the most respected leaders of the movement, and Carl Peters, a local landscape and mural artist, who taught at the UR’s Memorial Art Gallery. Dodd’s stylistic handling of his subjects is most evident in his emphasis on gesture, gravity and movement rather than exact proportion, perspective and detail. This allowed him the freedom to express the underlying mood or energy of the subject. Like Benton, Dodd’s work almost always included human activity.”