Dozier Bell
Oculus, Smoke (2017)
Dozier Bell, a seventh generation Maine native, studied art with Neil Welliver in the University of Pennsylvania MFA program and at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture.
Since her first solo show in 1987, she has appeared in thirty solo and two person exhibits in New York City and across the country. She is the recipient of several awards, including an American Academy of Arts and Letters Purchase Prize, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, a Fulbright Fellowship as artist-in-residence at the Bauhaus University in Weimar, Germany, two Pollock Krasner Foundation Grants, and the Adolf and Esther Gottlieb Foundation Grant. Residencies include the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center, and the MacDowell Colony, among others. She received an Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree from the Maine College of Art in 1997. Her work is included in a number of museum and corporate collections.
She is currently represented by Carol Corey Fine Art in Kent, CT, and in Maine by Sarah Bouchard.
Statement:
“Oculus, Smoke” is part of a series of paintings in which the anxieties of contemporary life are juxtaposed with the impassivity of the natural world.
The human tendency to assign characteristics such as benevolence, limitation, plenitude, or threat to natural systems we only partially understand is reflected in European folk tales, and in the art and literature of German Romanticism that drew upon them. In these stories, animals, plants, and the weather are affected by, and respond to, the human protagonists’ history and intent; they are also agents of forces above and beyond human understanding, part of a web of connections that dwarfs reason and intention. The existential anxiety and longing that characterizes this world view take on new meaning in light of contemporary problems of pollution and climate change and our own agency in producing them.
Some of my recent drawings and paintings hint at the nature of those threats while simultaneously evoking a lost time and place that appear to offer a degree of security; the nostalgia they convey is rooted in a connection to nature that endures in the psyche even as it weakens in contemporary life.
EDUCATION
MFA, University of Pennsylvania, 1986
Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, 1985. Full scholarship.
BA, Smith College, 1981. Magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa
SELECTED ONE AND TWO-PERSON EXHIBITIONS
2021 Dozier Bell: Monhegan Island Carol Corey Fine Art, Kent, CT
2019 Half-light Danese Corey Gallery, New York, NY
2018 Zolla Lieberman Gallery, Chicago, IL
2017 Ogunquit Museum of American Art, Ogunquit, ME
2016 Dowling Walsh Gallery, Rockland, ME
2014 Danese Corey Gallery, New York, NY
2013 Dozier Bell: Mind’s Eye Bates College Museum of Art, Lewiston, ME 2010 Dozier Bell: Momenta Center for Maine Contemporary Art, Rockport, ME Aucocisco Gallery, Portland, ME
2009 DFN Gallery, New York, NY
La Galeria, Barcelona, Spain
2007 Gold/Smith Gallery, Boothbay Harbor, ME
Aucocisco Gallery, Portland, ME
2006 DFN Gallery, New York, NY
2005 Chase Gallery, Boston, MA
Aucocisco Gallery, Portland, ME
2004 National Academy of Sciences, Washington, DC
University of Maine Museum of Art, Bangor, ME
DFN Gallery, New York, NY
2003 The Hudson River Museum, Yonkers, NY
A.V.C. Gallery, New York, NY
2002 Aucocisco Gallery, Portland, ME
2000, 1998 June Fitzpatrick Gallery, Portland, ME
2001 Chase Gallery, Boston, MA
2000 Schmidt-Bingham Gallery, New York, NY
June Fitzpatrick Gallery, Portland, ME
SELECTED COLLECTIONS
Arkansas Art Center, Little Rock, AR
Boise Art Museum, Boise, ID
Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Bowdoin, ME
Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville, ME
Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO
Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland, ME
Harvard Business School, Cambridge, MA
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX
Ogunquit Museum of American Art, Ogunquit, ME
Portland Museum of Art, Portland, ME
United Talent Agency, Los Angeles, CA
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2019 The LIGHT Show Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO
Fear and Wonder: Sublime Landscapes on Paper—Selections from the Museum’s Collection The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX
2018 Inside the Cube: Looking Back Over 40 Years Art Gallery, University of New England, Portland, ME
2017 48th Annual Collectors’ Show and Sale Arkansas Arts Center, Little Rock, AR
2016 Drawing Conclusions Danese Corey Gallery, New York, NY
2015 Director’s Cut: Selections from the Maine Art Museum Trail Portland Museum of Art, Portland, ME
Land and Sea Danese Corey Gallery, New York, NY
2014 Invitational Exhibition of Visual Art, Academy of Arts and Letters, New York, NY
2013 Seescape George Adams Gallery, New York, NY
Woods, Lovely, Dark, and Deep DC Moore Gallery, New York, NY
Maine Women Pioneers University of New England, Westbrook, ME2011 Land, Sea, and Sky: Contemporary Art in Maine
Addison Gallery at Phillips Academy, Andover, MA
"Synthetic Supports: Plastic is the New Paper" Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
2010 Dozier Bell, Karen Schiff, Hadi Tabatabai: Drawings
Danese Gallery, New York, NY
Sacred and Profane Portsmouth Museum of Art, Portsmouth, NH
2009 Selections from the Ogunquit Museum of American Art
Portsmouth Atheneum, Portsmouth, NH
Portland Museum of Art Biennial Portland, ME
2008 Art from Anxious Times Art Students League, New York, NY
Transcendental and Sublime Sacred Heart University, Fairfield, CT
Silence La Galeria, Consell de Cent, BarcelonaMidnight Full of Stars Visual Arts Center of New Jersey, Summit, NJ
2007 New Artists Bentley Gallery, Scottsdale, AZ
Introductions II Stremmel Gallery, Reno, NV
2006 The Figure in American Painting and Drawing, 1985-2005 Ogunquit Museum of American Art, Ogunquit, ME
2005 The Environment of Landscape: Works from the Olivia and Ellwood Straub Collection, Bates College, Lewiston, ME
2004-07 American Embassy in Abuja, Nigeria
2004 Images of Time and Place: Contemporary Views of Landscape The Lehman Gallery, Bronx, NY
2003-04 Facing Reality: The Seavest Collection of Contemporary Realism Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase, NY
2002 50th Anniversary Exhibition Center for Maine Contemporary Art, Rockport, ME
Keenly Observed Sacred Heart University, Fairfield, CT2001-02 Re-presenting Representation V The Arnot Art Museum, Elmira, NY 2000 Photographing Maine: 1850 - 2000 Maine Coast Artists, Rockport, ME 1998 After Dark Maine Coast Artists, Rockport, ME