Dozier Bell: Monhegan Island

Feb. 27 - Apr. 4, 2021
  • Dozier Bell Shore, toward dusk, 2020 watercolor on paper 3.5 x 9 in.
  • The drawings and paintings of Dozier Bell are at once deep evocations of natural environments culled from memory and experience...

    Dozier Bell, Monhegan Rocks, 2019, charcoal on Mylar, 4.75 x 5.75 in. 

    The drawings and paintings of Dozier Bell are at once deep evocations of natural environments culled from memory and experience past, and reflections of a life of philosophical inquiry and keen observation that merge in her work as marvels of virtuosity and poignant imagery. Her work is a visual autobiography of a sort, one that recalls generations of a Maine family that worked the land, and embraced the nearby sea.

     

    In 2019, Bell was awarded her first Monhegan Island Residency, and she returned this past  September 2020. While on the island, she was inspired to begin working with watercolor, a new medium for her, as well as to continue to create paintings and her intimate, diminutive charcoal drawings. 

     

     

  • Monhegan Island, off the coast of Maine, has been drawing artists from around the world since the mid-19th century. Notable...

    Monhegan Island, off the coast of Maine, has been drawing artists from around the world since the mid-19th century. Notable artists who have been inspired by its rugged landscape and unique light include William Trost Williams, George Bellows, Rockwell Kent, Edward Hopper, Winslow Homer and three generations of the Wyeth family -- N.C., Andrew and Jamie. 

     

    The Monhegan Artist Residency first began in 1988, when Rachel and Peter Boehmer had a dream of enabling serious artists to come to the island for several weeks at a time. Through their friendships with Robert Semple and Chris Crosman of the Farnsworth Museum, they were able to invite the first artists the following year. The program is designed to provide artists with "time and space in which to work free of interruption and constraint in [an) inspiring environment..."

     

    Bell described her experience on the island as affording her just that – an "unpressured, uninterrupted flow of thought and work... I was able to consider the work I've done over the past 30 years, why I'd been doing it, how that might change, and what kind of inputs are needed... It was invaluable at this point in my life."

     

  • Exacting and deliberate, Dozier Bell's works 'comprise a vision of nature that sweeps across vast plains and valleys, ascends into...

    Dozier Bell, Western cove, sunset through cloudbank, 2020, watercolor, 5.5 x 8 in. 

    Exacting and deliberate, Dozier Bell's works "comprise a vision of nature that sweeps across vast plains and valleys, ascends into lofty skies, and reaches toward far distant horizons,… The vision often pictures nature at dawn or dusk, its light generally dimmed and pale or momentarily darkened by clouds, its expanse sometimes broken only by a first or last glimpse of the flashing sun, its temper otherwise solemn, even troubled, as if brooding."

    Carl Belz, Left Bank Art Blog, 2014
  • Infinitely complex, at once undefended and harsh, welcoming and seemingly impenetrable, this forested, watery place continually shows me the inescapable...

    Dozier Bell, Night Departure, 2020, watercolor on paper, 5.25 x 8 in. 

    Infinitely complex, at once undefended and harsh, welcoming and seemingly impenetrable, this forested, watery place continually shows me the inescapable vulnerability and unknowable forces that inform it, and by extension, us.

    Dozier Bell
  • Dozier Bell, Duck Rocks, 2021, charcoal on Mylar, 2.5 x 6 in.