DFN Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of new paintings and charcoal drawings by Dozier Bell.  As in her previous show at DFN in 2004, Bell pairs large landscape paintings of skies and outer space with figurative paintings and drawings of earthly historical periods – Germany during and in between the two World Wars and Europe during the Black Plague of the 14th century. 

In her paintings, which include crosshairs and sight lines, Bell recognizes how man has developed technologies for the purpose of surveillance and warfare and, in doing so, has usurped the extraordinary powers that had previously been solely associated with the divine. Bell also sees the irony implicit in the fact that the very same advances which have given us the ability to destroy entire cities from afar, have also provided the photographic images that reveal to us the extreme beauty of the universe.

Dozier Bell’s small, though often highly-detailed, charcoal drawings in this exhibit are images either drawn from the artist’s imagination or composed from hundreds of photographs of Germany taken during the period from 1917 to 1945.  According to the artist, “the act of making these drawings is a way of trying to understand, in some infinitesimal degree and at a great remove of time and distance, the causes and consequence of conflicts which greatly affected my parent’s generation, and which I have struggled to understand since childhood.”   

In his review of Dozier Bell’s previous exhibit at DFN in the New York Observer, critic Hilton Kramer wrote: “As a painter of landscapes and skies who usually works in acrylic on linen, and as a draftsman working in charcoal on acetate, she’s in such total command of her mediums that she engages our interest and wins our confidence well before we attempt to identify the sometimes hermetic character of her imagery.”  

Dozier Bell studied at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and received her MFA from the University of Pennsylvania. She has received numerous awards including fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Fulbright Artist-in-Residence Program.

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