Painter Tomory Dodge at #VermontStudioCenter

A RISD and CALarts grad, Dodge gave a summarizing PowerPoint of his career path within hours of arriving from Los Angeles. Soft spoken and honest about his doubts, Dodge has always liked the precarious image and the, (his words) "materiality of paint." His large, (average 8 x 8 foot), paintings have transitioned from representation to abstraction since leaving grad school.

From Dodge's Space Junk series of 2008

Using a high contrast of lights and darks, crisp lines versus a soft-edge blend, and some nifty cartoon visual tricks, Dodge creates a foreground "figure" with receding windows and hallucinatory exaggeration. His work veers towards the philosophy of AbEx with a sense of the genius soul latent in every gestural mark and scrape, BUT he uses California candy colors- like hot pink and turquoise.
Only 40 years old, his work was early on snapped up by dealers. He is now in permanent collections everywhere ...
Berkley Art Museum, Berkley, CA
Orlando Museum of Art, Orlando, FL
Henry Art Gallery, Seattle, WA
Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY
The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA
Knoxville Museum of Art, Knoxville, TN
Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Johnson County Community College, Overland Park, KS
Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, C T
and... represented by galleries in London, Los Angeles, NYC and Zurich!

He will be making studio visits until next Wednesday.
Dodge came to my studio first thing this morning and it was good to get a response suggesting that there is way more work to do. Having painted straight for three weeks, I am slowing down. I am getting tired. I am, to be truthful, starting to look forward to getting the hell out of Dodge next week.