A painter in styles ranging from realism to symbolic abstraction and a distinguished, much-respected art educator, Lamar Dodd appears to be the state of Georgia's most recognized artist of the mid to late 20th century. He had a career centered in that state, although his education and some of his painting assignments, such as being an official artist for the National Aerospace Program, took him far beyond his hometown of Athens. There at the University of Georgia, he was professor and chairman of the art department, now named the Lamar Dodd School of Art.

Lamar Dodd was born in Fairburn, Georgia in 1909 and was raised in LaGrange, Georgia. When he was twelve, his obvious art talent led to his acceptance as a special student at LaGrange College, then named LaGrange Female College. Studying for five years, he received a degree from the College at the same time he graduated from high school.

He then enrolled briefly at the Georgia Institute of Technology, 1926-1927, and spent time teaching in rural Alabama. However, he quickly realized that if he was going to advance his talents, he needed to get out of the South and go to an art center. In 1928, he began studies in New York City at the Art Students League with George Bridgeman and Boardman Robinson, and also took private lessons with George Luks and Charles Martin. Recalling the teaching of Luks and his espousing of social realism underscored by a somber palette, Dodd said that his influence was that of painting in monotones. Later Dodd, reacted by launching into a much more colorful palette including the injection of gold and silver leaf, which provided highlighting and religious symbolism.

Dodd increasingly painted circular shapes over a straight line, fascinated by the contrast and by the unity of that which was nearly circular and to him suggested the sun and the moon. One of his paintings with this motif is "The Crucified Sun", a title he chose for the deep intense background against silver leaf, which turns green when exposed to the air. Of this he said the work could either make one feel angry or happy, but either way he viewed it as powerful---possibly it is the earth, sun, moon or just a big 'oneness'. Former President Jimmy Carter has the painting hung by his desk at the Carter Center in Atlanta.

In 1930, he returned to LaGrange to get married. He devoted the year to painting, which led to a one-person exhibition at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta. In 1931, he returned to the Art Students League and became a student of Jean Charlot, Thomas Hart Benton and John Steuart Curry as well as his earlier teachers. Benton and Curry stirred Lamar Dodd's interest in regionalism and his own part of the South where he returned in 1933. The year before he had had a solo show at Ferargil Galleries in New York, and reinforcing Dodd's obvious commitment to his own region, a reviewer wrote that "Dodd's paintings, one after another, all so consciously anti-academic, evoke 'Georgia, Georgia, Georgia.' " (Georgia Encyclopedia)

Moving to Athens Dodd joined the faculty of the University of Georgia, which was part of a national movement to put working artists into academia. One year later he was named head of the Department of Art, and shortly after he established a Master's Degree program.

He brought much distinction to the school, earning artistic honors and serving as consultant to various federal agencies and educational entities. He was President of the College Art Association of America from 1954 to 1956, and in 1962 was named director of the National Council of Arts in Education.

In his own quest for painting locations, he was also expanding by traveling all over Georgia and onto the islands and coasts of South Carolina. He also started going to Monhegan Island off the coast of Maine in the late 1940s. In the 1950s, he began traveling worldwide including to Europe, the Mideast, Asia and then to the Soviet Union where he was named a cultural emissary for the State Department. The travel, especially to France where he saw the work of Cezanne, had a marked influence on lightening his palette and adding elements of realism and cubism to his predominantly abstract style he adopted early in his career.

In the 1960s and 1970s, he took on two major projects, that in retrospect seem quite opposite to each other---the vastness of the universe and the closed world of the human heart and the surgery performed upon it.

In 1963, Lamar Dodd was named an official artist for NASA for the Mercury Astronaut-9 project, and then served as a NASA artist for numerous other rocket launchings including Apollo 9 for which he did an abstraction titled "Totality Triptych". This painting reflected his interest in circular shapes, and their conveyance of unity and order. He was a part of this program for nearly twenty-five years and became totally fascinated by it. Dodd said that it opened his creativity to another world that was way beyond the solid form perceptions that had been guiding his work. For Dodd, being a NASA artist meant immersion in sun, stars, and colors never seen on earth--a real-world few people had seen.

The second project was a series called "The Heart", which began in 1978 and resulted from his wife, Mary, having open-heart surgery. The surgeon asked Lamar Dodd to do paintings in the operating room to capture the sense of drama as well as the realistic details of the procedure. In preparation, Dodd talked to many doctors and did extensive reading, which resulted in eight years of focus on the series. He found it fascinating because, like the space program, the subject matter was complex, held his sympathy, provided a challenge with its mysteries, and was linked to universal subjects of life, death and rebirth.

In the Series, Dodd did nearly sixty paintings, often using silver and gold leaf, in his abstract/realist style employing circular shapes and religious symbolism. The Heart Series was done when Dodd was getting old, and his own sense of mortality and the shortness of life made the subject even more compelling to him.

In the last two decades of his life, Lamar Dodd spent much time in Maine at Monhegan Island and also traveled throughout the United States and Europe. Many of his paintings were in watercolor and reflected his awe in the natural beauty of many of his surroundings. Some said that his career went full circle as it began in his own state, then expanded as far as outer space, and then psychologically returned to his 'own back yard'. However, he did not avoid harsh realities. One of his paintings, completed in 1995, the year before he died, featured the bloody glove of the O.J. Simpson murder trial.

Because Lamar Dodd had such a wide-ranging career and yet remained so anchored in Georgia, he has been described as "the most influential Georgia artist of his generation". (George Encyclopedia)

Sources: College Art Association, Gale Group Interview