The Washington Post reviews Lois Dodd & Colleen Cox

By Mark Jenkins
May 18th, 2018

”At Brooklyn College about 25 years ago, Lois Dodd taught Colleen Cox. That’s one reason for Gallery Neptune & Brown’s “Two Painters: A Visual Dialogue,” which juxtaposes the artists’ gently realistic modes. Another is to display vintage Dodd watercolors that have never been publicly exhibited.

Made mostly in the 1960s at her vacation home in Maine, Dodd’s pictures began as drawings. The pencil lines are evident, and often indispensable. The subjects are landscapes and female nudes, depicted in a summery style. The most common colors are pinks (for rocks as well as flesh) and greens, applied translucently but seldom loosely. The artist, now 91, was deliberate even in this spontaneous medium.

Cox’s paintings are darker and more precise, which in part is simply because they’re oils. Many are still lifes of simple objects, reminiscent of Giorgio Morandi’s but more detailed and with some brighter colors amid the tans and grays. Cox’s summer place is in South Dakota, where she paints big-sky scenes that flirt with abstraction. The biggest contrast in this show is not between Dodd and Cox, but between Cox’s indoor and outdoor modes.”