NEWS RELEASE
For Immediate Release
Sept. 30, 2009

FOR MORE INFORMATION, CONTACT:
Ann Dee Lee
Public Information Director
Oklahoma Arts Council
(405) 521-2931
anndee@arts.ok.gov

ON THE ROAD: MIDWESTERN LANDSCAPES
EXHIBITED AT STATE CAPITOL
Enid artist Jeff Dodd featured in Governor’s Gallery

Oklahoma City, OK –  A native of rural Western Oklahoma, artist Jeff Dodd has been painting realistic portraits and landscapes for nearly 30 years. His exhibit, On the Road: Midwestern Landscapes, is on display through November 29th in the Governor’s Gallery, located on the 2nd floor of the State Capitol and open Monday through Friday from 8:30-5:00. Admission is free and exhibits are curated by the Oklahoma Arts Council.

Drawing since he was a child, Dodd received his formal education from Southwestern Oklahoma State University where he graduated with a degree in commercial art.  After a brief stint as a student at Wichita State University, Dodd relocated to New York City to study drawing at the Art Students League under noted teacher Tony Ryder.  However, it was only after he had moved to Santa Fe in 1991 that Dodd first began painting. He credits his greatest influences as Rembrandt, a renowned artist of Realism; Monet, the “father” of Impressionism; and Francis Bacon, an Abstract Expressionist painter.

“My art means everything to me,” says Dodd. “Artists give a part of themselves to that which they create.” Jeff Dodd regularly travels from his home in northwestern Oklahoma to southwestern Kansas. His long journeys, which span 800 miles of prairieland, provide this self-described “obsessive painter” countless hours of inspiration.

Dodd also credits workmanship as a very important component in his work. Whether working on small-scale landscapes or large murals, superior workmanship is central to his artistic philosophy. As a result, Dodd was commissioned in the 1990s to create two murals, titled Oklahoma Black Gold and We Belong to the Land, to commemorate the oil and gas and agricultural industries of Oklahoma. These paintings are permanently on display on the fifth floor of the Capitol. Besides his permanent art at the Capitol, Dodd’s artwork has been commissioned and installed at the Philbrook Museum of Art in Tulsa as well as the newly built Norman Regional Hospital HealthPlex. Dodd, who was born in Kingfisher, now lives and paints full-time in Enid, Oklahoma.

For more information, contact Ann Dee Lee, Public Information Director, Oklahoma Arts Council, (405) 521-2931 or anndee@arts.ok.gov.

ABOUT THE OKLAHOMA ARTS COUNCIL

The Oklahoma Arts Council is a state agency whose mission is to improve lives through the arts by promoting and sustaining the development of a thriving arts environment, which is essential to quality of life, education and economic vitality for all Oklahomans.

---End---