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Once a shipwright, Dodds’ paintings illustrate the anatomy of boats, revealing the materials and curves that underwrite the finished vessel, this aspect of his work is explored in Emily Harris’ film for Classic Yacht TV, ‘Shaped by the Sea’, which draws many parallels between the art of the boat builder and the painter of boats.
Yet his paintings go beyond retracing the shipwright’s logic. Rich in colour, tone and texture, they move beyond the literal and evoke sailing’s mythic and historic dimensions. Ethereal in light and tone, paintings of restored boats evoke a lifetime at sea, unearthing the layers of memory that shroud every vessel.
Ancestral lines also resurface in the artist’s new work. Following recent trips to Norfolk and Denmark, Dodds sheds new light on historic North Sea crossings, contending that all clinker-built boats around the British coastline derive from Viking vessels.
As Ian Collins writes: “[Dodds’] life and work are forever immersed in the spirit and spectacle of the sea.” Born in Brightlingsea, Dodds has built his studio a few miles upstream in Wivenhoe, in what was once a great boatyard on the River Colne. Before enrolling in the Royal College of Art he worked as a shipwright, rebuilding Thames barges on Britain’s east coast.
2 – 23 December
Messums is delighted to announce the forthcoming solo shows of long represented artist, James Dodds.
Dodds began his artistic career at Chelsea School of Art before going on to the Royal College of Art, graduating in 1984. In many ways however it began when he left school to work as a shipwright where he learnt the craft that would continue to influence him and his creative practice.
Though initially drawn to abstraction the tidal pull of the fascinating and at times surreal beauty of the built vessel bought him back to his true focus. Floating on plains of colour, away from the human hands that built them, these paintings, which still draw on an element of abstraction, are anatomical studies. To Dodds, these vessels are his models, his sitters that come into the studio to sit for a portrait.